Class 
Book 




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^=^^:^ 



THE LIFE 



JOHN STERLING: 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 



SECOND EDITION. 



BOSTON: 

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY. 
1852. 




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•\3 



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WBIOHT AMD BASTY, PRINTERS, 

No, 3 Water Street, 

By Transfer 

D. C. Public Library 

OCT 1 5 1934 



« 



TRANSPERKED FROM BUBLIC LLBRARy 
CONTENTS. 





PAET I. 


PAGE 


Chap. I. 


Introductory 


7 


II. 


Birth and Parentage 


. 16 


III. 


Schools : Llanblethian ; Paris ; London 


. 24 


IV. 


Universities : Glasgow ; Cambridge 


44 


V. 


A Profession 


54 


VI. 


Literature : The Athen^um . 


61 


VII. 


Regent Street .... 


64 


VIII. 


Coleridge 


. 73 


IX. 


Spanish Exiles .... 


85 


X. 


TORRIJOS 


90 


XI. 


Marriage : Ill-Health ; West Indies 


100 


XII. 


Island of St. Vincent 


105 


XIII. 


A Catastrophe 


116 


XIV. 


Pause 


121 


XV. 


Bonn; Herstmonceux . . . . 


126 




PART II. 




Chap. I. 


Curate . . . . • . 


135 


II. 


Not Curate 


140 


III. 


Bayswater ...... 


160 


IV. 


To Bordeaux .... 


175 



IV 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


Chap. V. 


To Madeira .... 


. 192 


VI. 


Literature : The Sterling Club 


. 207 


VII. 


Italy ...... 


. 215 


VIII. 


Clifton 


. 242 


IX. 


Two Winters .... 


. 260 


X. 


Falmouth : Poems 


. 273 


XI. 


Naples : Poems 


. 292 


XII. 


Disaster on Disaster 


. 305 


XIII. 


Ventnor : Death . . . . 


. 323 


XIV. 


Conclusion .... 


. 340 



LIFE OF JOHN STERLING. 



PART I. " 



1* 



X 



\ 



JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY. 



Near seven years ago, a short while before his death in 
1844, John Sterling committed the care of his literary 
Character and printed Writings to two friends, Archdeacon 
Hare and myself. His estimate of the bequest was far 
from overweening ; to few men could the small sum-total of 
his activities in this world seem more inconsiderable than, 
in those last solemn days, it did to him. He had burnt 
much ; found much unworthy ; looking steadfastly into the 
silent continents of Death and Eternity, a brave man's 
judgments about his own sorry work in the field of Time 
are not apt to be too lenient. But, in fine, here was some 
portion of his work which the world had already got hold 
of, and which he could not burn. This too, since it was 
not to be abolished and annihilated, but must still for some 
time live and act, he wished to be wisely settled, as the 
rest had been. And so it was left in charge to us, the sur- 



8 JOHN STERLING. 

vivors, to do for it -what we judged fittest, if indeed doing 
nothing did not seem the fittest to us. This message, com- 
municated after his decease, was naturally a sacred one to 
Mr. Hare and me. 

After some consultation on it, and survey of the difl&cul- 
ties and delicate considerations involved in it, Archdeacon 
Hare and I agreed that the whole task, of selecting what 
Writings were to be reprinted, and of drawing up a Biogra- 
phy to introduce them, should be left to him alone ; and 
done without interference of mine : — as accordingly it was,* 
in a manner surely far superior to the common, in every 
good quality of editing ; and visibly everywhere bearing 
testimony to the friendliness, the piety, perspicacity and 
other gifts and virtues of that eminent and amiable man. 

In one respect, however, if in only one, the arrangement 
had been unfortunate. Archdeacon Hare, both by natural 
tendency and by his position as a Churchman, had been 
led, in editing a Work not free from ecclesiastical heresies, 
and especially in writing a Life very full of such, to dwell 
with preponderating emphasis on that part of his subject ; 
by no means extenuating the facts, nor yet passing lightly 
over it (which a layman could have done) as needing no 
extenuation ; but carefully searching into it, with the view 
of excusing and explaining it ; dwelling on it, presenting 
all the documents of it, and as it were spreading it over the 
whole field of his delineation ; as if religious heterodoxy 
had been the grand fact of Sterling's life, which even to 
the Archdeacon's mind it could by no means seem to be. — 
Hinc nice lachrymce. For the Religious Newspapers, and 

* John Sterling's Essays and Tales, with Life, by Archdeacon Hare. — 
Parker : London, 1848. 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

Periodical Heresy-hunters, getting very lively in those 
years, were prompt to seize the cue, and have prosecuted 
and perhaps still prosecute it, in their sad way, to all 
lengths and breadths. John Sterling's character and writ- 
ings, which had little business to be spoken of in any 
Church-court, have hereby been carried thither as if for an 
exclusive trial ; and the mournfullest set of pleadings, out 
of which nothing but a misjudgment can be formed, prevail 
there ever since. The noble Sterling, a radiant child of 
the empyrean, clad in bright auroral hues in the memory 
of all that knew him, — what is he doing here in inquisitorial 
sanbenito, with nothing but ghastly spectralities prowling 
round him, and inarticulately screeching and gibbering 
what they call their judgment on him ! 

* The sin of Hare's Book,' says one of my Correspond- 
ents in those years, ' is easily defined, and not very con- 
demnable, but it is nevertheless ruinous to his task as 
Biographer. He takes up Sterling as a clergyman mere- 
ly. Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months ; 
during eight months and no more had he any special rela- 
tion to the Church. But he was a man, and had relation 
to the Universe, for eight and thirty years : and it is in 
this latter character, to which all the others were but fea- 
tures and transitory hues, that we wish to know him. His 
battle with hereditary Church-formulas was severe ; but it 
was by no means his one battle with things inherited, nor 
indeed his chief battle ; neither, according to my observa. 
tion of what it was, is it successfully delineated or summed 
up in this Book. The truth is, nobody that had known 
Sterling would recognize a feature of him here ; you would 
never dream that this Book treated of him at all. A pale, 



10 JOHN STERLING. 

sickly shadow in torn surplice is presented to us here ; 
weltering bewildered amid heaps of what you call " He- 
brew Old-clothes ;" wrestling, with impotent impetuosity, 
to free itself from the baleful imbroglio, as if that had been 
its one function in life : who in this miserable figure would 
recognize the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Ster- 
ling, with his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imagina- 
tions; with his frank affections, inexhaustible hopes, audac" 
ities, activities, and general radiant vivacity of heart and 
intelligence, which made the presence of him an illumination 
and inspiration wherever he went ? It is too bad. Let a 
man be honestly forgotten when his life ends ; but let him 
not be misremembered in this way. To be hung up as an 
ecclesiastical scarecrow, as a target for heterodox and 
orthodox to practice archery upon, is no fate that can be 
due to the memory of Sterling. It was not as a ghastly 
phantasm, choked in Thirty-nine article controversies, or 
miserable Semitic, Anti-semitic street-riots, — in scepticisms, 
agonized self-seekings, — that this man appeared in life ; nor 
as such, if the world still wishes to look at him, should you 
suffer the world's memory of him now to be. Once for all, 
it is unjust ; emphatically untrue as an image of John 
Sterling: perhaps to few men that lived long with him 
could such an interpretation of their existence be more in- 
applicable.' 

Whatever truth there might be in these rather passionate 
representations, and to myself there wanted not a painful 
feeling of their truth, it by no means appeared what help 
or remedy any friend of Sterling's, and especially one so 
related to the matter as myself, could attempt in the in- 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

terim. Perhaps endure in patience till the dust laid itself 
again, as all dust does if you leave it well alone ? Much 
obscuration would thus of its own accord fall away ; and, 
in Mr. Hare's narrative itself, apart from his commentary, 
many features of Sterling's true character would become 
decipherable to such as sought them. Censure, blame of 
this Work of Mr. Hare's was naturally far from my 
thoughts. A Work Avhich distinguishes itself by human 
piety and candid intelligence ; which, in all details, is care- 
ful, lucid, exact; and which offers, as we say, to the obser- 
vant reader that will interpret facts, many traits of Sterling 
besides his heterodoxy. Censure of it, from me especially, 
is not the thing due ; from me a far other thing is due ! 

On the whole, my private thought was : First, How 
happy it comparatively is, for a man of any earnestness of 
life, to have no Biography written of him ; but to return 
silently, with his small, sorely foiled bit of work, to the 
Supreme Silences, who alone can judge of it or him ; and 
not to trouble the reviewers, and greater or lesser public, 
with attempting to judge it ! The idea of ' fame,' as they 
call it, posthumous or other, does not inspire one with 
much ecstasy in these points of view. — Secondly, That 
Sterling's performance and real or seeming importance in 
this world was actually not of a kind to demand an express 
Biography, even according to the world's usages. His 
character was not supremely original ; neither was his fate 
in the world wonderful. What he did was inconsiderable 
enough ; and as to what it lay in him to have done, this 
was but a problem, now beyond possibility of settlement. 
Why had a Biography been inflicted on this man ; why had 
not No biography, and the privilege of all the weary, been 



12 JOHN STERLING. 

his lot ? — Thirdly, That such lot, however, could now no 
longer be my good Sterling's ; a tumult having risen 
around his name, enough to impress some pretended like- 
ness of him, (about as like as the Guy-Fauxes are, on 
Gunpowder Day) upon the minds of many men : so that 
he could not be forgotten, and could only be misremem- 
bered, as matters now stood. 

Whereupon as practical conclusion to the whole, arose 
by degrees this final thought. That, at some calmer season, 
when the theological dust had well fallen, and both the 
matter itself, and my feelings on it, were in a suitabler 
condition, I ought to give my testimony about this friend 
whom I had known so well, and record clearly what my 
knowledge of him was. This has ever since seemed a kind 
of duty I had to do in the world before leaving it. 

And so, having on my hands some leisure at this time, 
and being bound to it by evident considerations, one of 
which ought to be especially sacred to me, I decide to fling 
down on paper some "outline of what my recollections and 
reflections contain in reference to this most friendly, bright 
and beautiful human soul ; who walked with me for a sea- 
son in this world, and remains to me very memorable while 
I continue in it. Gradually, if facts simple enougl\ in 
themselves can be narrated as they came to pass, it will be 
seen what kind of man this was ; to what extent condemna- 
ble for imaginary heresy and other crimes, to what extent 
laudable and loveable for noble manful orthodoxy and other 
virtues ; — and whether the lesson his life had to teach us is 
not much the reverse of what the Religious Newapapers 
hitherto educe from it. 



INTRODUCTORY. 13 

Certainly it was not as a ' sceptic ' that you could define 
him, -whatever his definition might be. Behef, not doubt, 
attended him at all points of his progress ; rather a ten- 
dency to too hasty and headlong belief. Of all m^n he 
was the least prone to what you could call scepticism : dis- 
eased self-listenings, self-questionings, impotently painful 
dubitations, all this fatal nosology of spiritual maladies, so 
rife in our day, was eminently foreign to him. *^Quite on 
the other side lay Sterling's faults, such as they were. In 
fact, you could observe, in spite of his sleepless intellectual 
vivacity, he was not properly a thinker at all ; his faculties 
were of the active, not of the passive or contemplative 
sort. A brilliant improvisator e ; rapid in thought, in word 
and in act ; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating 
of men. I likened him often, in my banterings, to sheet- 
lightning ; and reproachfully prayed that he would concen- 
trate himself into a bolt, and rive the mountain-barriers for 
us, instead of merely playing on them and irradiating 
them. 

True, he had his * religion ' to seek, and painfully shape 
together for himself, out of the abysses of conflicting disbe- 
lief and sham-belief and bedlam delusion, now filling the 
world, as all men of reflection have ; and in this respect 
too, — more especially as his lot in the battle appointed for 
us all was, if you can understand it, victory and not de- 
feat, — he is an expressive emblem of his time, and an 
instruction and possession to his contemporaries. For, I 
say, it is by no means as a vanquished doubter that he 
figures in the memory of those who knew him ; but rather 
as a victorious believer^ and under great difiiculties a victo- 
rious doer. An example to us all, not of lamed misery, 
2 



14 JOHN STERLING. 

helpless spiritual bewilderment and sprawling despair, or 
any kind of drownage in the foul welter of ,our so-called 
religious or other controversies and confusions ; but of a 
swift and valiant vanquisher of all these ; a noble assertor 
of himself, as well as worker . and speaker, in spite of all 
these. Continually, so far as he went, he was a teacher, 
by act and word, of hope, clearness, activity, veracity, and 
human courage and nobleness : the preacher of a good 
gospel to all men, not of a bad to any man. The man, 
whether in priest's cassock or other costume of men, who is 
the enemy or hater of John Sterling, may assure himself 
that he does not yet know him, — that miserable diflferences 
of mere costume and dialect still divide him, whatsoever is 
worthy, catholic and perennial in him, from a brother soul 
who, more than most in his day, was his brother and not 
his adversary in regard to all that. 

Nor shall the irremediable drawback that Sterling was 
not current in the Newspapers, that he achieved neither 
what the world calls greatness nor what intrinsically is 
such, altogether discourage me. What his natural size, 
and natural and accidental limits were, will gradually ap- 
pear, if my sketching be successful. And I have remarked 
that a true delineation of the smallest man, and his scene 
of pilgrimage through life, is capable of interesting the 
greatest man ; that all men are to an unspeakable degree 
brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of every man's ; 
and that Human Portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all 
pictures the welcomest on human walls. Monitions and 
moralities enough may lie in this small Work, if honestly 
written and honestly read ; — and, in particular, if any 
image of John Sterling and his Pilgrimage through our 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

poor Nineteenth Century be one day wanted by the world, 
and they can find some shadow of a true image here, my 
swift scribbling (which shall be very swift and immediate) 
may pfove useful by and by. 



16 JOHN STERLING. 

CHAPTER II. 

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 

John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, a kind of 
dilapidated baronial residence to ■which a small farm was 
then attached, rented by his Father, in the Isle of Bute, — 
on the 20th July, 1806. Both his parents were Irish by- 
birth, Scotch by extraction ; and became, as he himself 
did, essentially English by long residence and habit. Of 
John himself Scotland has little or nothing to claim except 
the birth and genealogy, for he left it almost before the 
years of memory ; and in his mature days regarded it, if 
with a little more recognition and intelligence, yet without 
more participation in any of its accents outward or inward, 
than other natives of Middlesex or Surrey, where the 
scene of his chief education lay. 

The climate of Bute is rainy, soft of temperature ; with 
skies of unusual depth and brilliancy, while the weather 
is fair. In that soft rainy climate, on that wild-wooded rocky 
coast, with its gnarled mountains and green silent valleys, 
with its seething rain-storms and many-sounding seas, was 
young Sterling ushered into his first schooling in this 
world. I remember one little anecdote his Father told me 
of those first years : One of the cows had calved ; young 
John, still in long-clothes, was permitted to go, holding by 
his father's hand, and look at the newly-arrived calf; a 
mystery which he surveyed with open intent eyes, and the 
silent exercise of all the scientific faculties he had ; — very 



BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 17 

strange mystery indeed, this new arrival, and fresh denizen 
of our Universe : " Wull't eat a-body ?" said John in his 
first practical Scotch, inquiring into the tendencies this 
mystery might have to fall upon a little fellow and consume 
him as provision : " Will it eat one. Father ?" — Poor little 
open-eyed John : the family long bantered him with this 
anecdote ; and we, in far other years laughed heartily on 
hearing it. Simple peasant laborers, ploughers, house-ser- 
vants, occasional fisher-people too ; and the sight of ships, 
and crops, and Nature's doings where Art has little med- 
dled with her : this was the kind of schooling our young 
friend had, first of all ; on this bench of the grand world- 
school did he sit, for the first four years of his life. 

Edward Sterling his Father, a man who subsequently 
came to considerable notice in the world, was originally 
of Waterford in Munster ; son of the Episcopalian Clergy- 
man there ; and chief representative of a family of some 
standing in those parts. Family founded, it appears, by a 
Colonel Robert Sterling, called also Sir Robert Sterling ; a 
Scottish Gustavus-Adolphus soldier, whom the breaking out 
of the Civil War had recalled from his German campaign- 
ings, and had before long, though not till after some waver- 
ings on his part, attached firmly to the Duke of Ormond 
and to the King's Party in that quarrel. A little bit of 
genealogy, since it lies ready to my hand, gathered long 
ago out of wider studies, and pleasantly connects things 
individual and present with the dim universal crowd of 
things past, — may as well be inserted here as thrown away. 

This Colonel Robert designates himself Sterling of ' Glo- 
rat ;' I believe, a younger branch of the well-known Stir- 
lings of Keir of Stirlingshire. It appears he prospered in 
2* 



18 JOHN STERLING. 

his soldiering and other business, in those bad Ormond 
times ; being a man of energy, ardor and intelligence, — 
probably prompt enough both with his word and with his 
stroke. There survives yet, in the Common Journals,* 
dim notice of his controversies and adventures ; especially 
of one controversy he had got into with certain victorious 
Parliamentary official parties, while his own party lay van- 
quished, during what was called the Ormond Cessation, or 
Temporary Peace made by Ormond with the Parliament in 
1646 : — in which controversy Colonel Robert, after repeat- 
ed applications, journeyings to London, attendances upon 
committees, and such like, finds himself worsted, declared 
to be in the wrong ; and so vanishes from the Commons 
Journals. 

What became of him when Cromwell got to Ireland, and 
to Munster, I have not heard ; his knighthood, dating from 
the very year of Cromwell's Invasion (1649), indicates a 
man expected to do his best on the occasion : — as in all 
probabiUty he did ; had not Tredah Storm proved ruinous, 
and the neck of this Irish War been broken at once. 
Doubtless the Colonel Sir Robert followed or attended his 
Duke of Ormond into foreign parts, and gave up his man- 
agement of Munster, while it was yet time : for after the 
Restoration we find him again, safe, and as was natural, 
flourishing with new splendor ; gifted, recompensed with 
lands ; — settled, in short, on fair revenues in those Munster 
regions. He appears to have had no children ; but to have 
left his property to William, a younger brother who had 
followed him into Ireland. From this William descends 

*Common Journals, iv. 15 (10th January 1644-5) ; and again v. 307 &c,, 
498 (18th September 1647— 15th of March 1647--8). 



BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 19 

the family which, in the years we treat of, had Edward 
SterUng, Father of our John, for its- representative. And 
now enough of genealogy. 

Of Edward Sterling, Captain Edward Sterling as his 
title was, who in the latter period of his life became well- 
known in London political society, whom indeed all Eng- 
land, with a curious mixture of mockery and respect and 
even fear, knew well as " the Thunderer of the Times 
Newspaper," there were much to be said, did the present 
task and its Hmits permit. As perhaps it might, on certain 
terms ? What is indispensable let us not omit to say. 
The history of a man's childhood is the description of his 
parents and environment : this is his marticulate but highly 
important history, in those first times, while of articulate 
he has yet none. 

Edward Sterling had now just entered on his thirty- 
fourth year; and was already a man experienced in for 
tunes and changes. A native of Waterford in Munster, as 
already mentioned ; born in the ' Deanery House of Wa- 
terford, 27th February, 1773,' say the registers. For his 
Father, as we learn, resided in the Deanery House, though 
he was not himself Dean, but only ' Curate of the Cathe- 
dral ' (whatever that may mean) ; he was withal rector of 
two other livings, and the Dean's friend, — friend indeed of 
the Dean's kinsmen the Beresfords generally ; whose grand 
house of Curraghmore, near by Waterford, was a familiar 
haunt of his and his children's. This reverend gentleman, 
along with his three livings and high acquaintanceships, 
had inherited political connections ; — inherited especially a 
Government Pension, with survivorship for still one life 



20 JOHN STERLING. 

beyond his own ; his father having been Clerk of the Irish 
House of Commons at the time of the Union, of which 
office the lost salary was compensated in this way. The 
Pension was of two hundred pounds ; and only expired 
with the life of Edward, John's Father, in 1847. There 
were, and still are, daughters of the family ; but Edward 
was the only son ; — descended, too, from the Scottish hero 
Wallace, as the old gentleman Avould sometimes admonish 
him ; his own wife, Edward's mother, being of that name, 
and boasting herself, as most Scotch Wallaces do, to have 
that blood in her veins. 

This Edward had picked up, at Waterford, and among 
the young Beresfords of Curraghmore and elsewhere, a 
thoroughly Irish form of character : fire and fervor, vitality 
of all kinds, in genial abundance ; but in a much more 
loquacious, ostentatious, much louder style than is freely 
patronised on this side of the Channel. Of Irish accent in 
speech he had entirely divested himself, so as not to be 
traced by any vestige in that respect ; but his Irish accent 
of character, in all manner or other more important respects, 
was very recognizable. An impetuous man, full of real 
energy, and immensely conscious of the same ; who trans- 
acted every thing not with the minimum of fuss and noise, 
but with the maximum : a very Captain Whirhvind, as one 
was tempted to call him. 

In youth, he had studied at Trinity College, Dublin ; 
visited the Inns of Court here, and trained himself for the 
Irish Bar. To the Bar he had been duly called, and was 
waiting for the results, — when, in his twenty-fifth year, the 
Irish Rebellion broke out ; whereupon the Irish Barristers 
decided to raise a corps of loyal Volunteers, and a complete 
change introduced itself into Edward Sterling's way of life. 



BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 21 

For, naturally, he had joined the array of Volunteers ; — 
fought, I have heard, ' in three actions with the rebels' 
(Vinegar Hill, for one) ; and doubtless fought well : but in 
the mess-rooms, among the young military and civil ofEcials, 
with all of whom he was a favorite, he had acquired a taste 
for soldier life, and perhaps high hopes of succeeding in it : 
at all events, having a commission in the Cheshire Militia 
offered him, he accepted that ; altogether quitted the Bar, 
and became- Captain Sterling thenceforth. From the 
Militia, it appears, he had volunteered with his Company 
into the Line ; and under some disappointments, and official 
delays of expected promotion, was continuing to serve as 
Captain there, ' Captain of the Eighth Battalion of Re- 
serve,' say the Military Almanacks of 1803, — in which 
year the quarters happened to be Derry, where new events 
awaited him. At a ball in Derry he met with Miss Hester 
Coningham, the queen of the scene, and of the fair world 
in Derry at that time. The acquaintance, in spite of some 
opposition, grew with vigor, and rapidly ripened : and ' at 
Fehan Church, Diocese of Derry,' where the Bride's 
father had a country-house, ' on Thursday, 5th April, 
1804, Hester Coninghata, only daughter of John Coning- 
ham, Esquire, Merchant in Derry, and of Elizabeth Camp- 
bell his wife,' was wedded to Captain Sterling ; she hap- 
piest, to him happiest, — as by Nature's kind law it is 
arranged. 

Mrs. Sterling, even in her later days, had still traces of 
the old beauty ; then and always she was a woman of 
delicate, pious, affectionate character ; exemplary as a wife, 
a mother and a friend. A refined female 'nature ; some- 
thing tremulous in it, timid, and with a certain rural fresh- 



22 JOHN STERLING. 

nes3 still unweakened by long converse -with the ■world. 
The tall slim figure always of a kind of quaker neatness ; 
the innocent anxious face, anxious bright hazle eyes ; the 
timid, yet gracefully cordial ways, the natural intelligence, 
instinctive sense and -worth, -were very characteristic. Her 
voice too ; with its something of soft querulousness, easily 
adapting itself to a light thin-flowing style of mirth on 
occasion, was characteristic: she had retained her Ulster 
intonations, and was withal somewhat copious in speech. 
A fine tremulously sensitive nature, strong chiefly on the 
side of the affections, and the graceful insights and activi- 
ties that depend on these: — truly a beautiful, much-suffer- 
ing, much-loving house-mother. From her chiefly, as one 
could discern, John Sterling had derived the delicate aroma 
of his nature, its piety, clearness, sincerity ; as from his 
Father, the ready practical gifts, the impetuosities and the 
audacities, were also (though in strange new form) visibly 
inherited. (A man was lucky to have such a Mother ; to 
have such Parents as both his were?^ 

Meanwhile the new Wife appears to have had, for the 
present, no marriage-portion ; neither was Edward Sterling 
rich, — according to his own ideas and aims, far from it. 
Of course he soon found that the fluctuating barrack-life, 
especially with no outlooks of speedy promotion, was little 
suited to his new circumstances : but how change it ? His 
father was now dead ; from whom he had inherited the 
Speaker Pension of two hundred pounds ; but of available 
probably little or nothing more. The rents of the small 
family estate, I suppose, and other property, had gone to 
portion sisters. Two hundred pounds, and the pay of a 
marching Captain : within the limits of that revenue all 
plan? of his had to restrict themselves at present. 



BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 23 

He continued for some time longer in the Army ; his 
wife undivided from him by the hardships of that way of 
life. Their first son Anthony (Captain Anthony Sterling, 
the only child who now survives) was born to them in this 
position, while lying at Dundalk, in January 1805. Two 
months later, some eleven months after their marriage, the 
regiment was broken ; and Captain Sterling, declining to 
serve elsewhere on the terms offered, and willingly accept- 
ing such decision of his doubts, was reduced to half pay. 
This was the end of his soldiering ; some five or six years 
in all ; from which he had derived for life, among other 
things, a decided military bearing, whereof he was rather 
proud ; an incapacity for practicing law ; — and consider- 
able uncertainty as to what his next course of life was now 
to be. 

For the present, his views lay towards farming : to estab- 
lish himself, if not as country gentleman, which was an 
unattainable ambition, then at least as some kind of gentle- 
man-farmer which had a flattering resemblance to that. 
Kaimes Castle with a reasonable extent of land, which, in 
his inquiries after farms, had turned up, was his first place 
of settlement in this new capacity ; and here, for some few 
months, he had established himself when John his second 
child was born. This was Captain Sterling's first attempt 
towards a fixed course of life ; not a very Avise one, I have 
understood : — yet on the whole, who, then and there, could 
have pointed out to him a wiser ? 

A fixed course of life and activity he could never attain, 
or not till very late ; and this doubtless was among the im- 
portant points of his destiny, and acted both on his own 
character and that of those who had to attend him on his 
wayfarings. ' 



24 JOHN STERLING. 

CHAPTER III. 

SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN ; PARIS ; LONDON. 

Edward Sterling never shone in farming ; indeed I 
believe he never took heartily to it, or tried it except in 
fits. Ilis Bute farm was, at best, a kind of apology for 
some far different ideal of a country establishment which 
could not be realized : practically a temporary landing- 
place from which he could make sallies and excursions in 
search of some more generous field of enterprise. Stormy 
brief efforts at energetic husbandry, at agricultural improve- 
ment and rapid field-labor, alternated with sudden flights to 
Dublin, to London, whithersoever any flush of bright out- 
look which he could denominate practical, or any gleam of 
hope which his impatient ennui could represent as such, 
allured him. This latter was often enough the case. In 
wet hay-times and harvest-times, the dripping out-door 
world, and lounging in-door one, in the absence of the 
master, offered far from a satisfactory appearance ! Here 
was, in fact, a man much imprisoned ; haunted, I doubt not, 
by demons enough ; though ever brisk and brave withal, — 
iracund, but cheerfully vigorous, opulent in wise or unwise 
hope. A fiery energetic soul consciously and unconsciously 
storming for deliverance into better arenas ; and this in a 
restless, rapid, impetuous, rather than in a strong, silent 
and deliberate way. 

In rainy Bute and the dilapidated Kaimes Castle, it was 



SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN. 20 

evident, there lay no Goshen for such a man. The lease, 
originally but for some three years and a half, drawing now 
to a close, he resolved to quit Bute ; had heard, I know 
not where, of an eligible cottage without farm attached, in 
the pleasant little village of Llanblethian close by Cow- 
bridge in Glamorganshire ; of this he took a lease, and 
thither with his family he moved in search of new fortunes. 
Glamorganshire was at least a better climate than Bute ; 
no groups of idle or of busy reapers could here stand wait- 
ing on the guidance of a master, for there was no farm 
here ; — and among its other and probably its chief though 
secret advantages, Llanblethian was much more convenient 
both for Dublin and London than Kaimes Castle had been. 

The removal thither took place in the autumn of 1809. 
Chief part of the journey (perhaps from Greenock to 
Swansea or Bristol) was by sea : John, just turned of 
three years, could in after times remember nothing of this 
voyage ; Anthony, some eighteen months older, has still a 
vivid recollection of the gray splashing tumult, and dim 
sorrow, uncertainty, regret and distress he underwent : to 
him a ' dissolving view ' which not only left its effect on the 
plate (as all views and dissolving-views doubtless do on that 
kind of 'plate,') but remained consciously present there. 
John, in the close of his twenty-first year professes not to 
remember any thing whatever of Bute ; his whole existence, 
in that earliest scene of it, had faded away from him : 
Bute also, with its shaggy mountains, moaning woods, and 
summer and winter seas, had been wholly a dissolving view 
for him, and had left no conscious impression, but only, like 
this voyage, an effect. 

Llanblethian hangs pleasantly, with its white cottages, 
3 



26 JOHN STERLING. 

and orchard and other trees, on the western slope of a 
green hill ; looking far and wide over green meadows and 
little or bigger hills, in the pleasant plain of Glamorgan ; a 
short mile to the south of Cowbridge, to which smart little 
town it is properly a kind of suburb. Plain of Glamorgan, 
some ten miles wide and thirty or forty long, which they 
call the Vale of Glamorgan ; — though properly it is not 
quite a Vale, there being only one range of mountains to it, 
if even one : certainly the central Mountains of Wales do 
gradually rise, in a miscellaneous manner, on the north side 
of it ; but on the south are no mountains, not even land, 
only the Bristol Channel, and far off, the Hills of Devon- 
shire, for boundary, — the " English Hills," as the natives 
call them, visible from every eminence in those parts. On 
such wide terms is it called Vale of Glamorgan. But called 
by whatever name, it is a most pleasant fruitful region ; 
kind to the native, interesting to the visitor. A waving 
grassy region ; cut with innumerable ragged lanes ; dotted 
with sleepy unswept human hamlets, old ruinous castles 
with their ivy and their daws, gray sleepy churches with 
their ditto ditto : for ivy everywhere abounds ; and gener- 
ally a rank fragrant vegetation clothes all things ; hanging, 
in rude many-colored festoons and fringed odoriferous tapes- 
tries, on your right and on your left, in every lane. A 
country kinder to the sluggard husbandman than any I 
have ever seen. For it lies all on limestone, needs no 
draining; the soil, everywhere of handsome depth and 
finest quality, will grow good crops for you with the most 
i mperfect tilling. At a safe distance of a day's riding lie 
the tartarean copper-forges of Swansea, the tartarean iron- 
forges of Merthyr ; their sooty battle far away, and not, at 



SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN. - 27 

such safe distance, a defilement to the face of the earth 
and skj, but rather an encouragement to the earth at least ; 
encouraging the husbandman to plough better, if he only 
would. 

The peasantry seem indolent and stagnant, but peaceable 
and well-provided ; much given to Methodism when they 
have any character ; — for the rest an innocent good- 
humored people, who all drink homebrewed beer, and have 
brown loaves of the most excellent home baked bread. 
The native peasant village is not generally beautiful, though 
it might be, were it swept and trimmed ; it gives one rather 
the idea of sluttish stagnancy, — an interesting peep into 
the Welsh Paradise of Sleepy Hollow. Stones, old kettles, 
naves of wheels, all kinds of broken litter, with live pigs 
and etceteras, lie about the street : for as a rule no rubbish 
is removed, but waits patiently the action of mere natural 
chemistry and accident ; if even a house is burnt or falls, 
you will find it there after half a century, only cloaked by 
the ever-ready ivy. Sluggish man seems never to have 
struck a pick into it ; his new hut is built close by on 
ground not encumbered, and the old stones are still left 
lying. 

This is the ordinary Welsh village ; but there are excep- 
tions, where people of more cultivated tastes have been led 
to settle ; and Llanblethian is one of the more signal of 
these. A decidedly cheerful group of human homes, the 
greater part of them indeed belonging to persons of refined 
habits ; trimness, shady shelter, white-wash, neither con- 
veniency nor decoration has been neglected here. Its 
effect from the distance on the eastward is very pretty : 
you see it like a little sleeping cataract of white houses, 



28 JOHN STERLING. 

with trees overshadowing and fringing it ; and there the 
cataract hangs, and does not rush away from you. 

John Sterhng spent his next five years in this locality. 
He did not again see it for a quarter of a century ; but 
retained, all his life, a lively remembrance of it ; and, just 
in the end of his twenty first year, among his earliest 
printed pieces, we find an elaborate and difi"use description 
of it and its relations to him, — part of which piece, in spite 
of its otherwise insignificant quality, may find place here : 

' The fields on which I first looked, and the sands which 
were marked by my earliest footsteps, are completely lost 
to my memory ; and of those ancient walls among which I 
began to breathe, I retain no recollection more clear than 

the outlines of a cloud in a moonless sky. But of L , 

the village where I afterwards lived, I persuade myself that 
every line and hue is more deeply and accurately fixed 
than those of any spot I have since beheld, even though 
borne in upon the heart by the association of the strongest 
feelings. 

' My home was built upon the slope of a hill, with a little 
orchard stretching down before it, and a garden rising 
behind. At a considerable distance beyond and beneath 
the orchard, a rivulet flowed through meadows and turned 
a mill ; while, above the garden, the summit of the hill was 
crowned by a few gray rocks, from which a yew-tree grew, 
solitary and bare. Extending at each side of the orchard, 
toward the brook, two scattered patches of cottages lay 
nestled among their gardens; and beyond this streamlet 
and the little mill and bridge, another slight eminence arose, 
divided into green fields, tufted and bordered with copse- 
wood, and crested by a ruined castle, contemporary, as was 



SCHOOLS: LLANBLETHIAN. 29 

said with the Conquest. I know not whether these things 
in truth made up a prospect of much beauty. Since I was 
eight years old, I have never seen them ; but I well know 
that no landscape I have since beheld, no picture of Claude 
or Salvator, gave me half the impression of living, heartfelt, 
perfect beauty which fills my mind when I think of that 
green valley, that sparkling rivulet, that broken fortress of 
dark antiquity, and that hill with its aged yew and breezy 
summit, from which I have so often looked over the broad 
stretch of verdure beneath it, and the country-town, and 
church-tower, silent and white beyond. 

' In that little town there was, and I believe is, a school 
where the elements of human knowledge were communi- 
cated to me, for some hours of every day, during a consid- 
erable time. The path to it lay across the rivulet and past 
the mill ; from which point we could either journey through 
the fields below the old castle, and the wood which sur- 
rounded it, or along a road at the other side of the ruin, 
close to the gateway of which it passed. The former track 
led through two or three beautiful fields, the sylvan domain 
of the keep on one hand, and the brook on the other ; 
while an oak or two,, like giant warders advanced from the 
wood, broke the sunshine of the green with a soft and 
graceful shadow. How often, on my way to school, have I 
stopped beneath the tree to collect the fallen acorns ; how 
often run down to the stream to pluck a branch of the haw- 
thorn which hung over the water ! The road which passed 
the castle joined, beyond these fields, the path which 
traversed them. It took, I well remember, a certain 
solemn and mysterious interest from the ruin. The shadow 
of the archway, the discolorlsations of time on all the walls > 



30 JOHN STERLINO. 

the dimness of the little thicket which encircled it, the 
traditions of its immeasurable age, made St. Quentin's 
Castle a wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a 
child ; and long after I last saw its mouldering roughness, 
I never read of fortresses, or heights, or spectres, or ban- 
ditti, without connecting them with the one ruin of my 
childhood. 

' It was close to this spot that one of the few adventures 
occurred which marked, in my mind, my boyish days with 
importance. When loitering beyond the castle, on the way 
to school, with a brother somewhat older than myself, who 
was uniformly my champion and protector, we espied a 
round sloe high up in the hedge-row. We determined to 
obtain it-; and I do not remember whether both of us, or 
only my brother, climbed the tree. However, when the 
prize was all but reached, — and no alchymist ever looked 
more eagerly for the moment of projection which was to 
give him immortality and omnipotence, — a gruff voice 
startled us with an oath, and an order to desist ; and I well 
recollect looking back, for long after, with terror to the 
vision of an old and ill-tempered farmer, armed with a bill- 
hook, and vowing our decapitation ; Hor did I subsequently 
remember without triumph the eloquence whereby alone, in 
my firm belief, my brother and myself had been rescued 
from instant death. 

' At the entrance of the little town stood an old gateway, 
with a pointed arch and decaying battlements. It gave 
admittance to the street which contained the church, and 
which terminated in another street, the principal one in the 

town of C . In this was situated the school to which I 

daily wended. I cannot now recall to mind the face of its 



SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN. 31 

good conductor, nor of any of lils scholars ; but I have 
before me a strong general image of the interior of his 
establishment. I remember the reverence with which I 
was wont to carry to his seat a well-thumbed duodecimo, 
the History of Greece by Oliver Goldsmith. I remember 
the mental agonies I endured in attempting to master the 
art and mystery of penmanship ; a craft in which, alas, I 

remained too short a time under Mr. R to become as 

great a proficient as he made his other scholai'S, and which 
my awkwardness has prevented me from attaining in any 
considerable perfection under my various subsequent peda- 
gogues. But that which has left behind it a brilliant trait 
of light was the exhibition of what are called " Christmas 
pieces ;" things unknown in aristocratic seminaries, but 
constantly used at the comparatively humble academy which 
supplied the best knowledge of reading, writing and arith- 
metic to be attained in that remote neighborhood. 

* The long desks covered from end to end with those 
painted masterpieces, the Life of Robinson Crusoe, the 
Hunting of Chevy-Chase, the History of Jack the Giant- 
Killer, and all the little eager faces and trembling hands 
bent over these, and- filling them up with some choice quota- 
tion, sacred or profane ; — no, the galleries of art, the the- 
atrical exhibitions, the reviews and processions, — which are 
only not childish because they are practiced and admired 
by men instead of children, — all the pomps and vanities of 
great cities, have shown me no revelation of glory such as 
did that crowded school-room the week before the Christ- 
mas holidays. But these were the splendors of life. The 
truest and the strongest feelings do not conneat themselves 



32 JOHN STERLING. 

• with any scenes of gorgeous and gaudy magnificence ; tliey 
are bound up in the remembrances of home. 

' The narrow orchard, with its grove of old apple-trees, 
against one of which I used to lean, and while I brandished 
a beanstalk, roar out with Fitzjames, 

" Come one, come all ; this rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I !" 

while I was ready to squall at the sight of a cur, and run 
valorously away from a casually approaching cow ; the field 
close beside it, where I rolled about in summer among the 
hay ; the brook in which despite of maid and mother, I 
waded by the hour ; the garden where I sowed flower-seeds, 
and then turned up the ground again and planted potatoes, 
and then rooted out the potatoes to insert acorns and apple- 
pips, and at last, as may be supposed, reaped neither roses, 
nor potatoes, nor oak-trees, nor apples ; the grass-plots on 
which I played among those with whom I never can play 
nor work again : all these are places and employments, — 
and, alas, playmates, — such as, if it were worth while to 
weep at all, it would be worth weeping that I enjoy no 
longer. 

' I remember the house where I first grew familiar with 
peacocks ; and the mill-stream into which I once fell ; and 
the religious awe wherewith I heard, in the warm twilight, 
the psalm-singing around the house of the Methodist miller; 
and the door-post against which I discharged my brazen 
artillery ; I remember the window by which I sat while my 
mother taught me French ; and the patch of garden which 

I dug for -; . But her name is best left blank ; it was 

indeed writ in water. These recollections are to me like 



SCHOOLS: LLANBLETHIAN. 33 

the wealth of a departed friend, a mournful treasure. But 
the public has heard enough of them ; to it they are worth- 
less : they are a coin which only circulates at its true 
value between the different periods of an individual's exist- 
ence, and good for nothing but to keep up a commerce 
between boyhood and manhood. I have for years looked 

forward to the possibility of visiting L ; but I am told 

that it is a changed village ; and not only has man been at 
work, but the old yew on the hill has fallen, and scarcely a 
low stump remains of the tree which I delighted in child- 
hood to think might have furnished bows for the Norman 
archers.'* 

In Cowbridge is some kind of free school, or grammar- 
school, of a certain distinction ; and this to Captain Sterling 
was probably a motive for settling in the neighborhood of it 
with his children. Of this however, as it turned out, there 
was no use made : the Sterling family, during its continu- 
ance in those parts, did not need more than a primary 
school. The worthy master who presided over these 
Christmas galas, and had the honor to teach John Sterling 
his reading and writing, was an elderly Mr. Reece of Cow- 
bridge, who still (in 1851) survives, or lately did ; and is 
still remembered by his old pupils as a worthy, ingenious 
and kindly man, " who wore drab breeches and white 
stockings." Beyond the Reece sphere of tuition John 
Sterling did not go in this locality. 

In fact the Sterling household was still fluctuating ; the 
problem of a task for Edward Sterling's powers, and of 
anchorage for his affairs in any sense, was restlessly strug- 

* Literary Chronicle, New Series; London, Saturday, 21st June, 1828. 
Art. 11. 



34 JOHN STERLING. 

gling to solve itself, but was still a good way from being 
solved. Anthony, in revisiting these scenes with John in 
1839, mentions going to the spot " where we used to stand 
with our Father, looking out for the arrival of the London 
mail :" a little chink through which is disclosed to us a big 
restless section of a human life. The Hill of Welsh Llanble- 
thian, then, is like the mythic Caucasus in its degree (as 
indeed all hills and habitations where men sojourn are) ; 
and here too, on a small scale, is a Prometheus Chained ? 
Edward Sterling, I can well understand, was a man to tug 
at the chains that held him idle in those the prime of his 
years ; and to ask restlessly, yet not in anger and remorse, 
so much as in hope, locomotive speculation, and ever-new 
adventure and attempt. Is there no task nearer my own 
natoral size, then ? So he looks out from the Hill-side 'for 
the arrival of the London mail ; ' thence hurries into Cow- 
bridge to the Post-office ; and has a wide web, of threads 
and gossamers, upon his loom, and many shuttles flying, in 
this world. 

By the Marquis of Bute's appointment he had, very 
shortly after his arrival in that region, become Adjutant of 
the Glamorganshire Militia, ' Local Militia ' I suppose ; 
and was, in this way, turning his military capabilities to 
some use. The office involved pretty frequent absences, in 
Cardiff and elsewhere. This doubtless was a welcome 
outlet, though a small one. He had also begun to try 
writing, especially on public subjects ; a much more copious 
outlet, — which indeed, gradually widening itself, became 
the final solution for him. Of the year 1811 we have a 
Pamphlet of his, entitled Military Reform; this is the 
second edition, ' dedicated to the Duke of Kent ;' the first 



SCHOOLS: LLANBLETHIAN. 35 

appears to have come out the year before, and had thus 
attained a certain notice, which of course was encouraging. 
He now furthermore opened a correspondence with the 
Times Newspaper ; wrote to it, in 1812, a series of Letters 
under the signature of Vetus : voluntary Letters I suppose, 
without payment or pre-engagement, one successful Letter 
calling out another ; till Vetus and his doctrines came to be 
a distinguishable entity, and the business amounted to some- 
thing. Out of my own earliest Newspaper reading, I can 
remember the name Vetus, as a kind of editorial backlog 
on which able editors were wont to chop straw now and 
then. Nay the Letters were collected and reprinted ; both 
this first series, of 1812, and then a second of next year : 
two very thin, very dim-colored cheap octavos ; stray 
copies of which still exist, and may one day become distill- 
able into a drop of History (should such be wanted of our 
poor ' Scavenger Age ' in time coming), though the read- 
ing of them has long ceased in this generation.* The first 
series, we perceive, had even gone to a second edition. 
The tone, wherever one timidly glances into this extinct 
cockpit, is trenchant and emphatic ; the name of Vetus, 
strenuously fighting there, had become considerable in the 
talking political world ; and, no doubt, was especially of 
mark, as that of a writer who might otherwise be important, 
with the proprietors of the Times. The connection con- 
tinued ; widened and deepened itself, — in a slow tentative 
manner ; passing naturally from voluntary into remuner- 
ated ; and indeed proving more and more to be the true 



* ' The Letters of Vetus from March 10 to May 10, 1812' (second edition, 
Loudon, 1812) : Ditto, ' Part IIL, with a Preface and Notes ' (ibid. 1814). ( 



36 JOHN STERLING. 

ultimate arena, and battlefield and seedfield, for the exu- 
berant impetuosities and faculties of this man. 

What the Letters of Vetus treated of I do not know ; 
doubtless they ran upon Napoleon, Catholic Emancipation, 
true methods of national defence, of eifective foreign Anti- 
gallicism, and of domestic ditto ; which formed the staple 
of editorial speculation at that time. I have heard in gen- 
eral that Captain Sterling, then and afterwards, advocated 
' the Marquis of Wellesley's policy ;' but that also, what it 
was, I have forgotten, and the world has been willing to 
forget. Enough, the heads of the Times establishment, 
perhaps already the Marquis of Wellesley and other im- 
portant persons, had their eye on this writer ; and it began 
to be surmised by him that here at last was the career he 
had been seeking. 

Accordingly, in 1814, when victorious Peace unexpect- 
edly arrived, and the gates of the Continent after five-and- 
twenty years of fierce closure were suddenly thrown open ; 
and the hearts of all English and European men awoke 
staggering as if from a nightmare suddenly removed, and 
ran hither and thither, — Edward Sterling also determined 
on a new adventure, that of crossing to Paris, and trying 
what might lie in store for him. For curiosity, in its idler 
sense, there was evidently pabulum enough. But he had 
hopes moreover of learning much that might perhaps avail 
him afterwards ; — hopes withal, I have understood, of 
getting to be Foreign Correspondent of the Times News- 
paper, and so adding to his income in the meanwhile. He 
left Llanblethian in May ; dates from Dieppe the 27th of 
that month. He lived in occasional contact with Parisian 



SCHOOLS : PARIS. 37 

notabilities (all of them except Madame de Stael forgotten 
now), all summer, diligently surveying his gi-ound ; — 
returned for his family, who were still in Wales but ready 
to move, in the beginning of August ; took them immedi- 
ately across with him ; a house in the neighborhood of 
Paris, in the pleasant village of Passy at once town and 
country, being now ready ; and so, under foreign skies, 
again set up his household there. 

Here was a strange new 'school' for our friend John 
now in his eighth year ! Out of which the little Anthony 
and he drank doubtless at all pores, vigorously as they had 
done in no school before. A change total and immediate. 
Somniferous green Llanblethian has suddenly been blotted 
out ; presto, here are wakeful Passy and the noises of 
paved Paris instead. Innocent ingenious Mr. Reece in 
drab breeches and white stockings, he with his mild Christ- 
mas galas and peaceable rules of Dilworth and Butterworth, 
has given place to such a saturnalia of panoramic, sym- 
bolic, and other teachers and monitors, addressing all the 
five senses at once. Who John's express tutors were, at 
Passy, I never heard ; nor indeed, especially in his case, 
was it much worth inquiring. To him and to all of us, the 
expressly appointed schoolmasters and schoolings we get 
are as nothing, compared with the unappointed incidental 
and continual ones, whose school-hours are all the days and 
nights of our existence, and whose lessons, noticed or unno- 
ticed, stream in upon us with every breath we draw. 
Anthony says they attended a French school, though only 
for about three months ; and he well remembers the last 
scene of it, ' the boys shouting Vive VUmpereur, when 
Napoleon came back.' 
4 



38 JOHN STERLING. 

Of John Sterling's express schooling, perhaps the most 
important feature, and by no means a favorable one to him, 
AYas the excessive fluctuation that prevailed in it. Change 
of scene, change of teacher hotli express and implied, was 
incessant with him ; and gave his young life a nomadic 
character, — which surely, of all the adventitious tendencies 
that could have been impressed upon him, so volatile, swift 
and airy a being as him, was the one he needed least. His 
gentle piou s-hearted Mother, ever watching over him in all 
outward changes, and assiduously keeping human pieties 
and good affections alive in him, was probably the best 
counteracting element in his lot. And on the whole, have 
we not all to run our chance in that respect ; and take, the 
most victoriously we can, such schoohng as pleases to be 
attainable in our year and place ? Not very victoriously, 
the most of us ! A wise well-calculated breeding of a 
young genial soul in this world, or alas of any young soul 
in it, lies fatally over the horizon in these epochs ! — This 
French scene of things, a grand school of its sort, and also 
a perpetual banquet for the young soul, naturally captivated 
John Sterling ; he said afterwards, ' New thing and expe- 
riences here were poured upon his mind and sense, not in 
streams, but in a Niagara cataract.' This too, however, 
was but a scene ; lasted only some six or seven months ; 
and in the spring of the next year, terminated as abruptly 
as any of the rest could do. 

For in the spring of the next year. Napoleon abruptly 
emerged from Elba ; and set all the populations of the 
world in motion, in a strange manner ; — set the Sterling 
household afloat, in particular ; the big European tide 
rushing into all smallest creeks, at Passy and elsewhere. 



1 



SCHOOLS : LONDON. 39 

In brief, on the 20th of March 1815, the family had to 
shift, almost to flj, towards home and the seacoast ; and 
for a day or two, were under apprehension of being 
detained and not reaching home. Mrs. Sterling, with her 
children and effects, all in one big carriage with two horses, 
made the journey to Dieppe ; in perfect safety, though in 
continual tremor : here they were joined by Captain Ster- 
ling, who had staid behind at Paris to see the actual advent 
of Napoleon, and to report what the aspect of affairs was, 
" Downcast looks of citizens, with fierce saturnalian acclaim 
of soldiery : " after which they proceed together to Lon- 
don without farther apprehension ; — there to witness, in due 
time, the tarbarrels of Waterloo, and other phenomena that 
followed. 

Captain Sterling never quitted London as a residence 
any more ; and indeed was never absent from it, except on 
autumnal or other excursions of a few weeks, till the end of 
his life. Nevertheless his course there was as yet by ijo 
means clear ; nor had his relations with the heads of the 
Times, or with other high heads, assumed a foi'm which 
could be called definite, but were hanging as a cloudy 
maze of possibilities, firm substance not yet divided from 
shadow. It continued so for some years. The Sterling 
household shifted twice or thrice to new streets or localities, 
— Russel Square or Queen Square, Blackfriars Road, and 
longest at the Grove, Blackheath, — before the vapors of 
Wellesley promotions and such like slowly sank as useless 
precipitate, and the firm rock, which was definite employ- 
ment, ending in lucrative co-proprietorship and more and 
more important connection with the Times Newspaper, 
slowly disclosed itself. 



40 JOHN STERLING. 

These changes of place naturally brought changes in 
John Sterling's schoolmasters : nor were domestic tragedies 
wanting, still more important to him. Ncay brothers and 
sisters had been born ; two little brothers m^ore, three little 
sisters he had in all ; some of whom came to their eleventh 
year beside him, some passed away in their second or 
fourth : but from his ninth to his sixteenth year they all 
died; and in 1821 only Anthony and John were left.* 
/ How many tears, and passionate pangs, and soft infinite 
\ regrets ; such as are appointed to all mortals ! In one 
year, I find, indeed in one half-year, he lost three little 
playmates, two of them within one month. His own age 
was not yet quite twelve. For one of these three, for little 
Edward, his next younger, who died now at the age of 
nine, Mr. Hare records that John copied out, in large 
school hand, a History of Valentine and Orson, to beguile 
the poor child's sickness, which ended in death soon, 
leaving a sad cloud on John. 

Of his grammar and other schools, which, as I said, are 
hardly worth enumerating in comparison, the most important 
seems to have been a Dr. Burney's at Greenwich ; a large 
day-school and boarding-school, where Anthony and John 

* Here in a Note, is the tragic little Register, with what indications for us 
may lie in it: 

1. Robert Sterling died, 4th June 1815, at Queen Square, in his fourth year 

(John being now nine). 

2. Elizabeth died, 12th March 1818, at Blackfriars Road, in her second year. 

3. Edward, 30th March 1S18 (same place, same month uud year), in his 

ninth. 

4. Hester, 21st July 1818 (tliree months later), at Blackheath, in her eleventh. 

5. Catherine Hester Elizabeth, IGth January, 1821, in Seymour Street. 



SCHOOLS; LONDON. 41 

gave their attendance for a year or two (1818, — 19) from 
Blackheath. ' John frequently did themes for the boys,' 
says Anthony, ' and for myself when I was aground.' His 
progress in all school learning was certain to be rapid, if 
he even moderately took to it. A lean, tallish, loose-made 
boy of twelve ; strange alacrity, rapidity and joyous eager- 
ness looking out of his eyes, and of all his ways and move- 
ments. I have a Picture of him at this stage ; a little 
Portrait, which carries its verification with it. In manhood 
too, the chief expression of his eyes and physiognomy was 
what I might call alacrity, cheerful rapidity. You could 
see, here looked forth a soul which was winged ; which 
dwelt in hope and action, not in hesitation or fear. An- 
thony says, he was 'an affectionate and gallant kind of boy, 
adventurous and generous, daring to a singular degree.' 
Apt enough withal to be ' petulant now and then ; ' on the 
whole, ' very self-willed ; ' doubtless not a little discursive 
in his thoughts and ways, and ' difficult to manage.' 

I rather think Anthony, as the steadier, more substantial 
boy, was the Mother's favorite ; and that John, though the 
quicker and cleverer, perhaps cost her many anxieties. 
Among the Papers given me, is an old browned half-sheet 
in stiff school hand, unpunctuated, occasionally ill spelt, — 
John Sterling's earliest remaining Letter, — which gives 
record of a crowning escapade of his, the first and the last 
of its kind ; and so may be inserted here. A very head- 
long adventure on the boy's part ; so hasty and so futile, 
at once audacious and impracticable ; emblematic of much 

that befell in the history of the man ! 

4# 



42 JOHN STERLING. 

* To Mrs. Sterling, BlackJieaih. 

September 21st, 1818. 

' Dear Mamma, — I am now at Dover, -wliere I arrived 
this morning about seven o'clock. When you thought I 
was going to church, I went down the Kent Road, and 
walked on tilll I came to Gravesend, which is upwards of 
twenty miles from Blackheath ; at about seven o'clock in 
the evening, without having eat any thing the whole time. 
I applied to an innkeeper (s^c) there, pretending that I 
had served a haberdasher in London, who left of (sic) 
business, and turned me away. He believed me ; and got 
me a passage in the coach here, for I said that I had an 
Uncle here, and that my Father and Mother were dead ; — 
when I wandered about the quays for some time, till I met 
Captain Keys, whom I asked to give me a passage to 
Boulogne ; which he promised to do, and took me home to 
breakfast with him : but Mrs. Keys questioned me a good 
deal ; when I not being able to make my story good, I was 
obliged to confess to her that I had run away from you. 
Captain Keys says that he will keep me at his house till 
you answer my letter. J. Sterling.' 

Anthony remembers the business well ; but can assign 
no origin to it, — some penalty, indignity or cross put sud- 
denly on John, which the hasty John considered unbear- 
able. His Mother's inconsolable weeping, and then his 
own astonishment at such a culprit's being forgiven, are all 
that remains with Anthony. The steady historical style of 
the young runaway of twelve, narrating merely, not in the 
least apologising, is also noticeable. 



SCHOOLS: LONDON. 43 

This was some six months after his little brother Ed- 
ward's death ; three months after that of Hester, his little 
sister next in the family series to him : troubled days for 
the poor Mother in that small household on Blackheath, as 
there are for Mothers in so many households in this world ! 
I have heard that Mrs. Sterling passed much of her time 
alone, at this period. Her husband's pursuits, with his 
"Wellesleys and the like, often carrying him into Town and 
detaining him late there, she would sit among her sleeping 
children, such of them as death had still spared, perhaps 
thriftily plying Iier needle, full of mournful affectionate 
night-thoughts, — apprehensive too, in her tremulous heart, 
that the head of the house might have fallen among robbers 
in his way homeward. 



44 JOHN STERLIiSia. 



CHAPTER IV. 

UNIVERSITIES : GLASGOW ; CAMBRIDGE. 

At a later stage, John had some instruction from a Dr. 
Waite at Blackheath ; and lastly, the family having now 
removed into Town, to Seymour Street in the fashionable 
region there, he ' read for a while with Dr. Trollope, 
Master of Christ's Hospital ; ' which ended his school 
history. 

In this his ever-changing course, from Reece at Cow- 
bridge to Trollope in Christ's, which was passed so nomadi- 
cally, under ferulas of various color, the boy had, on the 
whole, snatched successfully a fair share of what was 
going. Competent skill in construing Latin, I think also 
an elementary knowledge of Greek ; add ciphering to a 
small extent, Euclid perhaps in a rather imaginary condi- 
tion ; a swift but not very legible or handsome penman- 
ship, and the copious prompt habit of employing it in all 
manner of unconscious English prose composition, or even 
occasionally in verse itself : this, or something like this, he 
had gained from his grammar-schools ; this is the most of 
what they offer to the poor young soul in general, in these 
indigent times. The express schoolmaster is not equal to 
much at present, — while the wwexpress, for good or for 
evil, is so busy Avith a poor little fellow ! Other depart- 
ments of schooling had been infinitely more productive, for 



UNIVERSITIES : GLASGOW. 45 

our young friend, than the gerundgrinding one. A vora- 
cious reader I believe he all along was ; — had ' read the 
whole Edinburgh Review ' in these boyish years, and out 
of the circulating libraries one knows not what cartloads ; 
wading like Ulysses towards his palace ' through infinite 
dung.' A voracious observer and participator in all things 
he likewise all along was ; and had had his sights, and 
reflections, and sorrows and adventures, from Kaimes Cas- 
tle onward, — and had gone at least to Dover on his own 
score. Puer honce spei, as the school-albums say ; a boy 
of whom much may be hoped ? Surely, in many senses, 
yes. A frank veracity is in him, truth and courage, as 
the basis of all ; and of wild gifts and graces there is 
abundance. I figure him a brilliant, swift, voluble, affec- 
tionate and pleasant creature ; out of whom, if it were not 
that symptoms of delicate health already shew themselves, 
great things might be made. Promotions at least, espe- 
cially in this country and epoch of parliaments and eloquent 
palavers, are surely very possible for such a one ! 

Being now turned of sixteen, and the family economics 
getting yearly more propitious and flourishing, he, as his 
brother had already been, was sent to Glasgow University, 
in which city their Mother had connections. His brother 
and he were now all that remained of the young family ; 
much attached to one another in their College years as 
afterwards. Glasgow however was not properly their Col- 
lege scene : here, except that they had some tuition from 
Mr. Jacobson, then a senior fellow student, now (1851) 
the learned editor of St. Basil, and Regius Professor of 
Divinity in Oxford, who continued ever afterwards a valued 



46 JOHN STERLING. 

intimate of Jolm's, I find nothing special recorded of them. 
The Glasgow curriculum, for John especially, lasted but 
one year ; Vvho, after some further tutorage from Mr. Ja- 
cobson or Dr. Trollope, was appointed for a more ambitious 
sphere of education. 

In the beginning of his nineteenth year, ' in the autumn 
of 1824,' he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. His 
brother Anthony, who had already been there a year, had 
just quitted this Establishment, and entered on a military 
life under good omens ; I think, at Dublin under the Lord 
Lieutenant's patronage, to whose service he was, in some 
capacity, attached. The two brothers, ever in company 
hitherto, parted roads at this point ; and, except on holiday 
visits and by frequent correspondence, did not again live 
together ; but they continued in a true fraternal attach- 
ment while life lasted, and I believe never had any even 
temporary estrangement, or on either side a cause for such. 
The family, as I said, was now, for the last three years, 
reduced to these two ; the rest of the young ones, with 
their laughter and their sorrows, all gone. The parents 
otherwise were prosperous in outward circamstances ; the 
Father's position more and more developing itself into 
affluent security, an agreeable circle of acquaintance, and 
a certain real influence, though of a peculiar sort, accord- 
ing to his gifts for work in this world. 

Sterling's Tutor at Trinity College was Julius Hare, 
now the distinguished Archdeacon of Lewes ; — who soon 
conceived a great esteem for him, and continued ever after- 
wards, in looser or closer connection, his loved and loving 
friend. As the Biographical and Editorial work above 



UNIVERSITIES : CAMBRIDGE. 47 

led to abundantly evinces. Mr. Hare celebrates the 
erfui and beautiful gifts, the sparkling ingenuity, 
.v^ci^y logic, eloquent utterance, and noble generosities and 
pieties of his pupil ; — records in particular how once, on a 
sudden alarm of fire in some neighboring College edifice 
while his lecture was proceeding, all hands rushed out to 
help ; how the undergraduates instantly formed themselves 
in lines from the fire to the river, and in swift continu ^ 
kept passing buckets as was needful, till the enemy 
visibly fast yielding, — when Mr. Hare, going along 
line, Avas astonished to find Sterling at the river end ( 
standing up to his waist in water, deftly dealing witli 
buckets as they came and went. You in the river, I 
ling ;■ you with your coughs, and dangerous tendencii 
health! " Somebody must be in it," answered Sterl 
^' why not I, as well as another ? " Sterling's friends ' j 
remember many traits of that kind. The swiftest in all 
things, he was apt to be found at the head of the column, 
whithersoever the march might be : if towards any brunt of 
danger, there was he surest to be at the head ; and of him- 
self and his peculiar risks or impediments he was negligent 
at all times, even to an excessive and plainly unreasonable 
degree. 

Mr. Hare justly refuses him the character of an exact 
scholar, or technical proficient at any time in either of the 
ancient literatures. But he freely read in Greek and 
Latin, as in various modern languages ; and in all fields, in 
the classical as well, his lively faculty of recognition and 
assimilation had given him large booty in proportion to his 
labor. One cannot under any circumstances, conceive of 
Sterling as a steady dictionary philologue, historian, or 



48 JOHN STERLING. 

archasologlst : nor did lie here, nor could he well, attempt 
that course. At the same time, Greek and the Greeks 
being here before him, he could not fail to gather somewhat 
from it, to take some hue and shape from it. Accordingly 
there is, to a singular extent, especially in his early writ- 
ings, a certain tinge of Grecism and Heathen Classicality 
traceable in him ; — Classicality, indeed, which does not 
satisfy one's sense as real or truly living, but which ghtters 
with a certain genial, if perhaps almost meretricious half- 
japannish splendor, greatly distinguishable from mere 
gerundgrinding, and death in longs and shorts. If Classi- 
cality mean the practical conception, or attempt to con- 
ceive, what human life was in the epoch called classical, — 
perhaps few or none of Sterling's contemporaries in that 
Cambridge establishment carried away more of available 
Classicality than even he. \ 

But here, as in his former schools, his studies and inqui- 
ries, diligently prosecuted I believe, were of the most dis- 
cursive wide-flowing character ; not steadily advancing 
along beaten roads towards College honors, but pulsing out 
with impetuous irregularity now on this tract, now on that, 
towards whatever spiritual Delphi might promise to unfold 
the mystery of this world, and announce to him what was, 
in our new day, the authentic message of the gods. His 
speculations, readings, inferences, glances and conclu- 
sions were doubtless sufficiently encyclopedic ; his grand 
tutors the multifarious set of Books he devoured. And 
perhaps, — as is the singular case in most schools and edu- 
cational establishments of this unexampled epoch, — it was 
not the express set of arrangements in this or any extant 
University that could essentially forward him, but only the 



UNIVERSITIES : CAMBKIDGE. 49 

implied and silent ones : less in the prescribed ' course of 
study,' which seems to tend nowhither, than, — if you will 
consider it, — in the generous (not ungenerous) rebellion 
against said prescribed course, and the voluntary spirit of 
endeavor and adventure excited thereby, does help lie for 
a brave youth in such places. Curious to consider. The 
fagging, the illicit boating, and the thmgs forbidden by the 
schoolmaster, these, I often notice in my Eton acquaint- 
ances, are the things that have done them good ; these, 
and not their inconsiderable or considerable knowledije of 
the Greek accidence almost at all ! Wiiat is Greek acci- 
dence, compared to Spartan discipline, if it can be had ? 
That latter is a real and grand attainment. Certainly, if 
rebellion is unfortunately needful, and you can rebel in a 
generous manner, several things may be acquired in that 
operation, — rigorous mutual fidehty, reticence, stedfastness, 
mild stoicism, and other virtues far transcending your 
Greek accidence. Nor can the unwisest ' prescribed 
course of study ' be considered quite useless, if it have 
incited you to try nobly on all sides for a course of your 
own. A singular condition of Schools and High-schools, 
which have come down,, in their strange old clothes and 
' courses of study,' from the monkish ages into this highly 
unmonkish one ; — tragical condition, at which the intelli- 
gent observer makes deep pause ! 

One benefit, not to be dissevered from the most obsolete 
University still frequented by young ingenuous living souls, 
is that of manifold collision and communication with the 
said young souls; which, to every one of these coevals, is 
undoubtedly the most important branch of breeding for 
5 



50 JOHN STERLING. 

him. In this point, as the learned Huber has insisted,* 
the two English Universities, — their studies otherwise being 
granted to be nearly useless, and even ill done of their 
kind, — far excel all other Universities : so valuable are the 
rules of human behavior which from of old have tacitly 
established themselves there ; so manful, with all its sad 
drawbacks, is the style of English character, ' frank, sim- 
ple, rugged and yet courteous,' which has tacitly but 
imperatively got itself sanctioned alid prescribed there. 
Such, in full sight of Continental and other Universities, is 
Huber's opinion. Alas, the question of University Reform 
goes deep at present ; deep as the world ; — and the real 
University of these new epochs is yet a great way from us ! 
Another judge in whom I have confidence declares further. 
That, of these two Universities, Cambridge is decidedly the 
more Catholic (not Roman Catholic, but Human Catholic) 
in its tendencies and habitudes ; and that in fact, of all the 
miserable Schools and High-schools in the England of these 
years, he, if reduced to choose from them, would choose 
Cambridge as a place of culture for the young idea. So 
that, in these bad circumstances. Sterling had perhaps 
rather made a hit than otherwise ? . 

\i . . 

Sterling at Cambridge had undoubtedly a wide and 

rather genial circle of comrades ; and could not fail to be 

regarded and beloved by many of them. Their life seems 

to have been an ardently speculating and talking one ; by 

no means excessively restrained within limits ; and, in the 

more adventurous heads like Sterling's, decidedly tending 

* History of the English Universities. (Translated from the German). 



UNIVERSITIES : CAMBRIDGE. 61 

towards the latitudinarian in most things. They had among 
them a Debating Society called The Union ; where on 
stated evenings was much logic, and other spiritual fencing 
and ingenuous collision, — probably of a really superior 
quality in that kind ; for not a few of the then disputants 
have since proved themselves men of parts, and attained 
distinction in the intellectual walks of life. Frederic Mau- 
rice, Richard Trench, John Kemble, Spedding, Venables, 
Charles Buller, Richard Milnes and others : — I have heard 
that in speaking and arguing, Sterling was the acknowl- 
edged chief in this Union Club ; and that ' none even came 
near him, except the late Charles Buller,' whose distinction 
in this and higher respects was also already notable. 

The questions agitated seem occasionally to have touched 
on the political department, and even on the ecclesiastical. 
I have heard one trait of Sterling's eloquence, which sur- 
vived on the wings of grinning rumor, and had evidently 
borne upon Church Conservatism in some form ; " Have 
they not," — or perhaps it was. Has she (the Church) 
not, — " a black dragoon in every parish, on good pay and 
rations, horse-meat and man's-meat, to patrol and battle for 
these things ? " The ' black dragoon,' which naturally at 
the moment ruffled the general young imagination into 
stormy laughter, points towards important conclusions in 
respect to Sterling at this time. I conclude he had, with 
his usual alacrity and impetuous daring, frankly adopted 
the anti-superstitious side of things ; and stood scornfully 
prepared to repel all aggressions or pretensions from the 
opposite quarter. In short, that he w^as already, what 
afterwards th'cre is no doubt about his being, at all points a 
^Radical, as the name or nickname then went. In other 



52 JOHN STERLING. 

words, a young ardent soul looking with hope and joy into 
a world which was infinitely beautiful to him, though over- 
hung with falsities ' and foul cobwebs as Avorld never was 
before ; overloaded, overclouded, to the zenith and the 
nadir of it, by incredible uncredited traditions, solemnly 
sordid hypocrisies, and beggarly deliriums old and new ; 
which latter class of objects it was clearly the part of every 
noble heart to expend all its lightnings and energies in 
burning up without delaj'-, and sweeping into their native 
Chaos out of such a Cosmos as this. Which process, it did 
not then seem to him could be very difficult ; or attended 
with much other than heroic joy, and enthusiasm of victory 
or of baitle, to the gallant operator, in his part of it. This 
was, with modifications such as might be, the humor and 
creed of College Radicalism fiveand-twenty years ago. 
Rather horrible at that time ; seen to be not so horrible 
now, at least to have grown very universal, and to need no 
concealment now. The natural humor and attitude, we 
may well regret to say, — and honorable not dishonorable, 
for a brave young soul such as Sterling's, in those years in 
those localities ! 

I do not find that Sterling had, at that stage, adopted 
the then prevalent Utilitarian theory of human things. 
But neither, apparently, had he rejected it ; still less did 
he yet at all denounce it with the damnatory vehemence 
we were used to in him at a later period. Probably he, 
so much occupied with the negative side of things, had not 
yet thought seriously of any positive basis for his world ; or 
asked himself, too earnestly, What then is the noble rule of 
living for a man ? In this world so eclipsed -and scandal 
ously overhung with fable and hypocrisy, what is the^ 



universities: Cambridge. 68 

eternal fact, on which a man may front the Destinies and 
the Immensities ? The day for such questions, sure enough 
to come in his case, was still but coming. Sufficient for 
this day be the work thereof ; that of blasting into merited 
annihilation the innumerable and immeasurable recognized 
deliriums, and extirpating or coercing to the due pitch 
those legions of ' black dragoons,' of all varieties and pur- 
poses, who patrol, with horse-meat and man's-meat, this 
afflicted earth, so hugely to the detriment of it. 

Sterling, it appears, after above a year of Trinity Col- 
lege, followed his friend Maurice into Trinity Hall, with 
the intention of taking a, degree in Law ; which intention, 
like many others with him, came to nothing ; and in 1827 
he left Trinity Hall and Cambridge altogether ; here end- 
ing, after two years, his brief University life. 



5^ 



54 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER V. 



A PROFESSION. 



Here then is a young soul, brought to the years of legal 
majority, furnished from his training-schools ■with such and 
such shining capabilities, and ushered on the scene of 
things, to inquire practically, What he will do there ? 
Piety is in the man, noble human valor, bright intelligence, 
ardent proud veracity ; light and fire, in none of their 
many senses, wanting for him, but abundantly bestowed : a 
kingly kind of man ; — whose ' kingdom,' however, in this 
bewildered place and epoch of the world will probably be 
difficult to find and conquer ! 

For, alas, the world, as we said, already stands convicted 
to this young soul of being an untrue, unblessed world ; its 
high dignitaries many of them phantasms and players'- 
masks ; its worthships and worships unworshipful : from 
Dan to Beersheba, a mad Avorld, my masters. And surely 
we may say, and none will now gainsay, this his idea of 
the world at that epoch was nearer to the fact than at 
most other epochs it has been. Truly, in all times and 
places, the young ardent soul that enters on this world vath 
heroic purpose, with veracious insight, and the yet uncloud- 
ed ' inspiration of the Almighty ' which has given us our 
intelligence, will find this world a very mad one : why else 
is Ae, with his little outfit of heroisms and inspirations, 



A PROFESSION. 65 

come hither into it, except to make it diligently a little 
saner ? Of him there would have heen no need, had it 
been quite sane. This is true ; this will, in all centuries 
and countries, be true. 

And yet perhaps of no time or country, for the last two 
thousand years, was it so true as here in this waste-welter- 
ing epoch of Sterling's and ours. A world all rocking and 
plunging, like that old Roman one when the measure of its 
iniquities was full ; the abysses, and subterranean and 
supernal deluges, plainly broken loose ; in the wild dim- 
lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone out. No star of 
Heaven visible, hardly now to any man ; the pestiferous 
fogs, and foul exhalations grown continual, have, except on 
the highest mountain-tops, blotted out all stars : will-o'- 
wisps, of various course and color, take the place of stars. 
Over the wild-surging chaos, in the leaden air, are only 
sudden glares of revolutionary lightning ; then mere dark- 
ness, with philanthropistic phosphorescences, empty meteoric 
lights ; here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hov- 
ering, hanging on to its old quaking fixtures, pretending 
still to be a INIoon or Sun, — though visibly it is but a 
Chinese Lantern made of paper mainly, with candle-end 
foully d}'ing in the heart of it. Surely as mad a world as 
you could wish ! 

If you want to make sudden fortunes in it, and achieve 
the temporary hallelujah of flunkeys for yourself, renounc- 
ing the perennial esteem of wise men ; if you can beheve 
that the chief end of man is to collect about him a bigger 
heap of gold than ever before, in a shorter time than ever 
before, you will find it a most handy and every way 
furthersome, blessed and felicitous world. But for any 



•'Jii JOHNT STERLING. 

other human aim, I think you will find it not furthersome. 
If you in any way ask practically, How a noble life is to 
be led in it ? you will be luckier than Sterling or I if you 
get any credible answer, or find any made road whatever. 
Alas, it is even so. Your heart's question, if it be of that 
sort, most things and persons will answer with a : " Non- 
sense ! Noble fife is in Drury-Lane, and wears yellow 
boots. You fool, compose yourself to your pudding ! " — 
Surely, in these times, if ever in any, the young heroic soul 
entering on life, so opulent, fall of sunny hope, of noble 
valor and divine intention, is tragical as well as beautiful 
to us. 

Of the three learned Professions none ofiered any likeli- 
hood for Sterling. From the Church his notions of the 
' black dragoon,' had there been no other obstacle, were 
sufiicient to exclude him. Law he had just renounced, his 
own Radical i3hilosophies disheartening him, in face of the 
ponderous impediments, continual uphill struggles and for- 
midable toils inherent in such a pursuit ; with Medicine he 
had never been in any contiguity, that he should dream of 
it as a course for him. Clearly enough the professions were 
unsuitable ; they to him, he to them. Professions, built so 
largely on speciosity instead of performance ; clogged, in 
this bad epoch, and defaced under such suspicions of fatal 
imposture, were hateful not lovable to the young radical 
soul, scornful of gross profit, and intent on ideals and human 
noblenesses. Again, the professions, were they never so 
perfect and veracious, will require slow steady pulling, to 
which this individual young radical, with his swift far-dart- 
ing brilliancies, and nomadic desultory ways, is of all men 



A PROFESSION. 67 

the most averse and unfitted. No profession could, in any 
case, have well gained the early love of Sterling. And 
perhaps withal the most tragic element of his life is even 
this, That there now was none to which he could fitly, by 
those wiser than himself, have been bound and constrained, 
that he might learn to love it. So swift, light-limbed and 
fiery an Arab courser ought, for all manner of reasons, to 
have been trained to saddle and harness. Roaming at full 
gallop over the heaths, — especially when your heath was 
London, and English and European life, in the nineteenth 
century, — he suffered much, and did comparatively little. 
I have known few creatures whom it was more wasteful to 
send forth with the bridle thrown up, and set to steeple- 
hunting instead of running on highways ! But it is the lot 
of many such, in this dislocated time, — Heaven mend it ! 
In a better time there will be other ' professions ' than those 
three extremely cramp, confused and indeed almost obsolete 
ones : professions, if possible, that are true, and do not 
require you at the threshold to constitute yourself an im- 
postor. Human association, — which will mean discipline,! 
vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination, — is so un- 
speakably important. Professions, ' regimented human' 
pursuits,' how many of honorable and manful might be 
possible for men ; and which should not^ in their results to 
society, need to stumble along, in such an unwieldy futile 
manner, with legs swollen into such enormous elephantiasis 
and no go at all in them ! Men will one day think of the 
force they squander in every generation, and the fatal 
damage they encounter, by this neglect. 

The career likeliest for Sterling, in his and the Avorld's 



58 JOHN STERLING. 

circumstances, -would have been what is called public life : 
some secretarial, diplomatic or other official training, to 
issue if possible in Parliament as the true field for him. 
And here, beyond question, had the gross material condi- 
tions been allowed, his spiritual capabilities were first-rate. 
In anj arena where eloquence and argument was the 
point, this man was calculated to have borne the bell from 
all competitors. In lucid ingenious talk and logic, in all 
manner of brilliant utterance and tongue-fence, I have 
hardlj known his fellow. So ready lay his store of knowl- 
edge round him, so perfect was his ready utterance of the 
same, — in coruscating mi, in jocund drollery, in compact 
articulated clearness or high poignant emphasis, as the case 
required, — he was a match for any man in argument before 
a crowd of men. One of the most supple-wristed, dex- 
trous, graceful and successful fencers in that kind. A 
man, as Mr. Hare has said, ' able to argue with four or five 
at once ; ' could do the parrying all round, in a succession 
swift as light, and plant his hits wherever a chance offered. 
In Parliament, such a soul put into a body of the due 
toughness might have carried it far. If ours is to be called, 
as I hear some call it, the Talking Era, Sterling of all men 
had the talent to excel in it. 

Probably it was with some vague view towards chances 
in this direction that Sterling's first engagement was 
entered upon ; a brief connection as Secretary to some 
Club or Association into which certain public men, of the 
reforming sort, Mr. Crawford (the Oriental Diplomatist 
and Writer), Mr. Kirkman Finlay (then Member for 
Glasgow), and other political notabilities had now formed 
themselves, — ^Yith what spacific objects I do not know, nor 



A PROFESSION. 



59 



■with -what result if anv. I have heard vaguely, it was ' to 
open the trade to India.' Of course they intended to stir 
up the public mind into co-operation, Avhatever their goal or 
object Avas : Mr. Crawford, an intimate in the Sterling 
household, recognized the fine literary gift of John ; and 
might think it a lucky hit that he had caught such a Secre- 
tary for three hundred pounds a year. That was the 
salary agreed upon ; and for some months actually worked 
for and paid ; Sterling becoming for the time an intimate 
and almost an inmate in Mr. Crawford's circle, doubtless 
not without results to himself beyond the secretarial work 
and pounds sterling : so much is certain. But neither the 
Secretaryship nor the Association itself had any continu- 
ance ; nor can I now learn accurately more of it than what 
is here stated ; — in which vague state it must vanish from 
Sterling's history again, as it in great measure did from his 
life. From himself in after years I never heard mention of 
it ; nor were his pursuits connected afterwards with those 
of Mr. Crawford, though the mutual goodwill continued 
unbroken. 

In fact, however splendid and indubitable Sterling's 
qualifications for a parliamentary life, there was that in him 
withal which flatly put a negative on any such project. He 
had not the slow steady-pulling diligence which is indispen- 
sable in that, as in all important pursuits and strenuous 
human competitions whatsoever. In evei-y sense, his 
momentum depended on velocity of stroke, rather than on 
weight of metal : " beautifullest sheet hghtning," as I often 
said, " not to be condensed into thunderbolts." Add to 
this, — what indeed is perhaps but the same phenomenon in 
another form, — his bodily frame was thin, excitable, already 



60 JOHN STERLING. 

manifesting pulmonary symptoms ; a body -which the tear 
and wear of Parliament would infallibly, in few months, 
have wrecked and ended. By this path there was clearly 
no mounting. The far-darting restlessly coruscating soul,\ 
equipt beyond all others to shine in the Talking Era, and \ 
lead National Palavers with their spolia opima captive, is / 
imprisoned in a fragile hectic body which quite forbids the / 
adventure. ' Es ist dafilr gesorgt,^ says Goethe, ' Pro- 
vision has been made that the trees do not grow into the 
sky ; ' — means are always there to stop them short of the 
sky. 



literature: the athen^um. 61 



CHAPTER VI. 

. LITERATURE : THE ATHEN^UM. 

Of all forms of public life, in the Talking Era, it was clear 
that only one completely suited Sterling, — the anarchic, 
nomadic, entirely aerial and unconditional one, called Lit- 
erature. To this all his tendencies, and fine gifts positive 
and negative, were evidently pointing ; and here, after 
such brief attempting or thoughts to attempt at other posts, 
he already in this same year arrives. As many do, and 
ever more must do, in these our years and times. This is 
the chaotic haven of so many frustrate activities ; where all 
manner of good gifts go up in far-seen smoke or conflagra- 
tion ; and whole fleets, that might have been war-fleets to 
conquer kingdoms, are consumed (too truly, often), amid 
' fame ' enough, and the admiring shouts of the vulgar, 
which is always fond to see fire going on. The true 
Canaan and Mount Zion of a Talking Era must ever be 
Literature : the extraneous, miscellaneous, self-elected, 
indescribable Parliamentum, or Talking Apparatus, which 
talks by books and printed papers. 

A Uterary Newspaper called The Athenceum, the same 
which still subsists, had been founded in those years by Mr. 
Buckingham ; James Silk Buckingham, who has since 
continued notable under various figures. Mr. Bucking- 
ham's Athenceum had not as yet got into a flourishing 
condition ; and he Avas willing to sell the copyright of it for 
6 



62 JOHN STERLING. 

a consideration. Perhaps Sterling and old Cambridge 
friends of his had been already writing for it. At all events, 
Sterling, who had already privately begun writing a Novel, 
and was clearly looking towards Literature, perceived that 
his gifted Cambridge friend, Frederic Maurice, was now 
also at large in a somewhat similar situation ; and that here 
was an opening for both of them, and for other gifted 
friends. The copyright was purchased for I know not 
what sum, nor with whose money, but guess it may have 
been Sterling's, and no great sum ; — and so, under free 
auspices, themselves their own captains, Maurice and he 
spread sail for this new voyage of adventure into all the 
world. It was about the end of 1828 that readers of peri- 
odical literature, and quidnuncs in those departments, 
began to report the appearance, in a Paper called' the 
Athenceum, of writings shewing a superior brilliancy, and 
height of aim ; one or perhaps two slight specimens of 
which came into my own hands, in my remote corner, 
about that time, and were duly recognized by me, while the 
authors were still far off and hidden behind deep vails. 

Some of Sterling's best Papers from the Athenceum 
have been published by Archdeacon Hare : first fruits by 
a young man of twenty-two ; crude, imperfect, yet singu- 
larly beautiful and attractive ; which will still testify what 
high literary promise lay in him. The ruddiest glow of 
young enthusiasm, of noble incipient spiritual manhood 
reigns over them ; once more a divine Universe unvailing 
itself in gloom and splendor, in auroral firelight and many- 
tinted shadow, full of hope and full of awe, to a young 
melodious pious heart just arrived upon it. Often enough 
the delineation has a certain flowing completeness, not to 



LITERATURE : THE ATHBN^UM. 63 

be expected from so young an artist ; here and there is a 
decided felicity of insight ; everywhere the point of view 
adopted is a high and noble one, and the result worked out 
a result to be sympathized with, and accepted so far as it 
will go. Good reading still, those Papers, for the less 
furnished mind, — thrice-excellent reading compared with 
what is usually going. For the rest, a grand melancholy 
is the prevailing impression they leave ; — partly as if, 
while the surface was so blooming and opulent, the heart of 
them was still vacant, sad and cold. Here is a beautiful 
mirage, in the dry wilderness ; but you cannot quench 
your thirst there ! The writer's heart is indeed still too 
vacant, except of beautiful shadows and reflexes and 
resonances ; and is far from joyful, though it wears com- 
monly a smile. 

In some of the Greek delineations (^The Lycicm Painter, 
for example), we have already noticed a strange opulence 
of splendor, characterisable as half-legitimate, halfmeretri- 
cious, — a splendor hovering between the raffaelesque and 
the japannish. What other things Sterling wrote there, I 
never knew ; nor would he in any mood, in those later 
days, have told you, had you asked. This period of his 
life he alwaj^s rather accounted, as the Arabs do the 
idolatrous times before Mahomet's advent, the ' period of 
darkness.' 



64 



JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER VII. 



REGENT STREET. 



On the commercial side, the Atlienceum still lacked suc- 
cess ; nor was like to find it under the highly uncommercial 
management it had now got into. This, by and by, began 
to be a serious consideration. For money is the sinews of 
Periodical Literature almost as much as of war itself; 
without money, and under a constant drain of loss, Periodi- 
cal Literature is one of the things that cannot be carried 
on. In no long time Sterling began to be practically 
sensible of this truth ; and that an unpleasant resolution in 
accordance with it would be necessary. By him also, after 
a while, the Atlienceum was transferred to other hands, 
better fitted in that respect ; and under these it did take 
vigorous root, and still bears fruit according to its kind. 

For the present, it brought him into the thick of London 
Literature, especially of young London Literature and 
speculation ; in which turbid exciting element he swam and 
reveled, nothing loath, for certain months longer, — a period 
short of two years in all. He had lodgings in Regent 
Street : his Father's house, now a flourishing and stirring 
establishment, in South Place, Knightsbridge, where, under 
the warmth of increasing revenue and success, miscella- 
neous cheerful socialities and abundant speculations, chiefly 
political (and not John's kind, but that of the Times 
Newspaper and the Clubs), were rife, he could visit daily, 



REGENT STREET. 65 

and yet be master of his own studies and pursuits. 
Maurice, Trench, John Mill, Charles Buller : these, and 
some few others, among a wide circle of a transitory phan- 
tasmal character, whom he speedily forgot and cared not 
to remember, were much about him ; with these he in all 
ways employed and disported himself : a first favorite with 
them all. 

No pleasanter companion, I suppose, had any of them. 
So frank, open, guileless, fearless, a brother to all worthy 
souls whatsoever. Come when you might, here is he open- 
hearted, rich in cheerful fancies, in grave logic, in all 
kinds of bright activity. If perceptibly or imperceptibly 
there is a touch of ostentation in him, blame it not ; it is so 
innocent, so good and childlike. He is still fonder of 
jingling publicly, and spreading on the table, your big 
purse of opulences than his own. Abrupt too he is, cares 
little for big wigs and garnitures ; perhaps laughs more 
than the real fun he has would order ; but of arrogance 
there is no vestige, of insincerity or of ill-nature none. 
These must have been pleasant evenings in Regent Street, 
when the circle chanced to be well adjusted there. At 
other times, Philistines would enter, what we call bores, 
dullards. Children of Darkness ; and then, — except in a 
hunt of dullards, and a bore-baiting, which might be per- 
missible, — the evening was dark. Sterling, of course, had 
innumerable cares withal ; and was toiling like a slave ; 
his very recreations' almost a kind of work. An enormous 
activity was in the man ; — sufficient in a body that could 
have held it without breaking, to have gone far, even 
under the unstable guidance it was like to have ! 

Thus, too, an extensive, very variegated circle of con- 
6=^ 



66 JOHN STERLING. 

nections was forming round liira. Besides his Atliencemn 
work, and evenings in Regent Street and elsewhere, he 
makes visits to countrj-houses, the BuUers' and others ; 
converses with estabhshed gentlemen, with honorable 
women not a few ; is gay and welcome with the young of 
his own age ; knows also religious, witty and other distin- 
guished ladies, and is admirably known by them. On the 
whole, he is already locomotive ; visits hither and thither in 
a very rapid flying manner. Thus I find he had made one 
flying visit to the Cumberland Lake region in 1828, and 
got sight of Wordsworth ; and in the same year another 
flying one to Paris, and seen with no undue enthusiasm the 
Saint- Simonian Portent just beginning to preach for itself, 
and France in general simmering under a scum of impie- 
ties, levities, Saint-Simonisms, and frothy fantasticaUties of 
all kinds, towards the boiling-over which soon made the 
Three Days of July famous. But by far the most im- 
portant foreign home he visited was that of Coleridge on 
the Hill of Highgate, — if it were not rather a foreign 
shrine and Dodona-Oracle, as he then reckoned, — to which 
(onwards from 1828, as would appear) he was already an 
assiduous pilgrim. Concerning whom, and Sterling's all 
important connection with him, there will be much to say 
anon. 

Here, from this period is a Letter of Sterling's which 
the glimpses it affords of bright scenes and figures now 
sunk, so many of them, sorrowfully to the realm of shadows, 
will render interesting to some of my readers. To me on 
the mere Letter, not on its contents alone, there is acci- 
dentally a kind of fateful stamp. A few months after 
Charles Buller's death, while his loss was mourned by many 



REGENT STREET. 67 

hearts, and to his poor Mother all light except what hung 
upon his memory had gone out in the world, a certain 
deUcate and friendly hand, hoping to give the poor 
bereaved lady a good moment, sought out this Letter of 
Sterling's one morning, and called, with intent to read it 
to her : — alas, the poor lady had herself fallen suddenly 
into the languors of death, help of another grander sort 
now close at hand ; and to her this Letter was never 
read : — 

On ' Fanny Kemble,' it appears, there is an Essay by 
Sterling in the Athenceum of this year : ' 16th December, 
1829.' Very laudatory, I conclude. He much admired 
her genius, nay was thought at one time to be vaguely on 
the edge of still more chivalrous feelings. As the Letter 
itself may perhaps indicate. 

To Anthony Sterling, Esq., 2A.th Regiment, Dublin. 

Knightsbridge, Nov. 10th, 1829. 

' Mt dear Anthony, — Here in the Capital of England 
and of Europe, there is less, so far as I hear, of movement 
and variety than in your provincial Dublin, or among the 
Wicklow Mountains. We have the old prospect of bricks 
and smoke, the old crowd of busy stupid faces, the old 
occupations, the old sleepy amusements ; and the latest 
news that reaches us daily has an air of tiresome, doting 
antiquity. The world has nothing for it but to exclaim 
with Faust, " Give me my youth again." And as for me, 
my month of Cornish amusement is over ; and I must tie 
myself to my old employments. I have not much to tell 
you about these ; but perhaps you may like to hear of my 
expedition to the West. 



68 JOHN STERLING. 

' I wrote to Polvellan (Mr. Buller's) to announce the 
day on Avliich I intended to be there, so shortly before set- 
ting out, that there was no time to receive an answer ; and ■ 
when I reached Devonport, which is fifteen or sixteen miles 
from my place of destination, I found a letter from Mrs. 
Buller, saying, that she was coming in two days to a Ball 
at Plymouth, and if I chose to stay in the meanwhile and 
look about me, she would take me back with her. She 
added an introduction to a relation of her husband's, a cer- 
tain Captain Buller of the Rifles, who was with the Depot 
there, — a pleasant person, 'who I believe had been ac- 
quainted with Charlotte,* or at least had seen her. Under 
his superintendence ' — * * « 

' On leaving Devonport with Mrs. Buller, I went some 
of the way by water, up the harbor and river ; and the 
prospects are certainly very beautiful ; to say nothing of 
the large ships, which I admire almost as much as you, 
though without knowing so much about them. There is a 
great deal of fine scenery all along the road to Looe ; and 
the House itself, a very unpretending Gothic cottage, 
stands beautifully among trees, hills and water, with the sea 
at the distance of a quarter of a mile. 

' And here, among pleasant, good-natured, well-informed, 
and clever people, I spent an idle month. I dined at one 
or two Corporation dinners ; spent a few days at the old 
Mansion of Mr. Buller of Morval, the patron of West 
Looe ; and during the rest of the time, read, wrote, 
played chess, lounged, and ate red mullet (he who has not 
done this has not begun to live) ; talked of cookery to the 

* Mrs. Anthony Sterling, very lately Miss Charlotte Baird. 



REGENT STREET. 69 

philosophers, and of metaphysics to Mrs. Buller ; and alto- 
gether cultivated indolence, and developed the faculty of 
nonsense with considerable pleasure and unexampled suc- 
cess. Charles Buller you know : he has just come to town, 
but I have not yet seen him. Arthur his younger brother, 
I take to be one of the handsomest men in England ; and 
he too has considerable talent. Mr. Buller the father is 
rather a clever man of sense, and particularly good-natured 
and gentlemanly ; and his wife, who Avas a renowned beauty 
and queen of Calcutta, has still many striking and delicate 
traces of what she was. Her conversation is more brilliant 
and pleasant than that of any one I know ; and, at all 
events, I am bound to admire her for the kindness with 
which she patronises me. I hope that, some day or other, 
you may be acquainted with her. 

' I believe I have seen no one in London about whom you 
would care to hear, — unless the fame of Fanny Kemble has 
passed the Channel, and astonished the Irish Barbarians in 
the midst of their bloody-minded politics. Young Kemble, 
whom you have seen, is in ^Germany : but I have the hap- 
piness of being also acquainted with his sister, the divine 
Fanny ; and I have seen her twice on the stage, and three 
or four times in private, since my return from Cornwall. I 
had seen some beautiful verses of hers, long before slie 
was an actress ; and her conversation is full of spirit and 
talent. She never was taught to act at all ; and though 
there are many faults in her performance of Juliet, there 
is more power than in any female playing I ever saw, ex- 
cept Pasta's Medea. She is not handsome, rather short, 
and by no means delicately formed ; but her face is marked, 
and the eyes are brilliant, dark, and full of character. She 



70 JOHN STEELING. 

has far more ability than she ever can display on the stage ; 
but I have no doubt that, by practice and self-culture, she 
will be a far finer actress at least than any one since Mrs. 
Siddons. I was at Charles Kemble's a few evenings ago, 
when a drawing of Miss Kemble, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
was brought in ; and I have no doubt that you will shortly 
see, even in Dublin, an engraving of her from it, very un- 
like the caricatures that have hitherto appeared. I hate 
the stage ; and but for her, should very likely never have 
gone to a theatre again. Even as it is, the annoyance is 
much more than the pleasure ; but I suppose I must go to 
see her in every character in which she acts. If Char- 
lotte cares for plays, let me know, and I will write in more 
detail about this new Melpomene. I fear there are very 
few subjects on which I can say any thing that will in the 
least interest her. — Ever affectionately yours, 

J. Sterling.' 

Sterling and his circle, as their ardent speculation and 
activity fermented along, were in all things clear for pro- 
gress, liberalism ; their politics, and view of the Universe, 
decisively of the Radical sort. As indeed that of England 
then was, more than ever ; the crust of old hidebound 
Toryism being now openly cracking towards some incurable 
disruption, which accordingly ensued as the Reform Bill 
before long. The Reform Bill already hung in the wind. 
Old hidebound Toryism, long recognized by all the world, 
and now at last obliged to recognize its very self, for an 
overgrown Imposture, supporting itself not by human rea- 
son, but by flunkey blustering and brazen lying, superadded 
to mere brute force, could be no creed for young Sterling 



REGENT STREET. 71 

and his friends. In all things he and they were liberals, 
and, as was natural at this stage, democrats ; contemplating 
root-and-branch innovation by aid of the hustings and bal- 
lot-box. Hustings and ballot-box had speedily to vanish 
out of Sterling's thoughts ; but the character of root-and- 
branch innovator, essentially of ' Radical Reformer,' was 
indelible with him, and under all forms could be traced as 
his character through life. 

For the present, his and those young people's aim was : 
By democracy, or what means there are, be all impostures 
put down. Speedy end to Superstition, — a gentle one if 
you can contrive it, but an end. What can it profit any 
mortal to adopt locutions and imaginations which do not 
correspond to fact ; which no sane mortal can deliberately 
adopt in his soul as true ; which the most orthodox of mor- 
tals can only, and this after infinite essentially imjnous 
effort to put out the eyes of his mind, persuade himself to 
* believe that he believes ? ' Away with it ; in the name of 
God, come out of it, all true men ! 

Piety of heart, a certain reality of religious faith, was 
always Sterling's, the gift of nature to him which he would 
not and could not throw away ; but I find at this time his 
religion is as good as altogether Ethnic, Greekish, what 
Goethe calls the Heathen form of religion. The Church, 
with her articles, is without relation to him. And along 
with obsolete spiritualisms, he sees all manner of obsolete 
thrones and big-wigged temporalities ; and for them also 
can prophesy, and wish, only a speedy doom. Doom inev- 
itable, registered in Heaven's Chancery from the beginning 
of days, doom unalterable as the pillars of the world ; the 



72 JOHN STERLING. 

gods are angry, and all Nature groans, till this doona of 
eternal justice be fulfilled. 

With gay audacity, with enthusiasm tempered by mock- 
ery, as is the manner of young gifted men, this faith, 
grounded for the jDresent on democracy and hustings opera- 
tions, and giving to all hfe the aspect of a chivalrous battle- 
field, or almost of a gay though perilous tournament, and 
bout of " A hundred knights against all comers," — was 
maintained by Sterling and his friends. And in fine, after 
whatever loud remonstrances, and solemn considerations, 
and such shaking of our wigs as is undoubtedly natural in 
the case, let us be just to it and him. We shall have to 
admit, nay, it will behove us to see and practically know, 
for ourselves and him and others, that the essence of this 
creed, in times like ours, was right and not wrong. That, 
however the ground and form of it might change, essen- 
tially it was the monition of his natal genius to this as it is 
to every brave man ; the behest of all his clear insight into 
this Universe, the message of Heaven through him, which 
he could not suppress, but was inspired and compelled to 
utter in this world by such methods as he had. There for 
him lay the first commandment ; this is what it would have 
been the unforgivable sin to swerve from and desert : the 
treason of treasons for him, it were there ; compared with 
ivhich all other sins are venial ! 

The message did not cease at all, as we shall see ; the 
nessage was ardently, if fitfully, continued to the end : but 
the methods, the tone and dialect and all outer conditions 
of uttering it, underwent most important modifications ! 



COLERIDGE. 73 



CHAPTER VIII. 



COLERIDGE. 



Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those 
years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, hke 
a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle ; attracting 
towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still 
engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, phi- 
losophy, or any specific province of human literature or 
enlightenment, had been small and sadly intermittent ; but 
he had, especially among young inquiring men, a higher 
than literary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. 
He was thought to hold, he alone in England, the key of 
German and other Transcendentalisms ; knew the sublime 
secret of believing by ' the reason ' what ' the understand- 
ing ' had been obliged to fling out as incredible ; and could 
still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and 
worst with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and 
say and print to the Church of England, with its singular 
old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Esto perpttua. 
A sublime man ; who, alone in those dark days, had saved 
his crown of spiritual manhood ; escaping from the black 
materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with. ' God, Free- 
dom, Immortality ' still his : a king of men. The practical 
intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly 
reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer : but to the rising 
spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime 
7 



74 JOHN STERLING. 

character ; and sat there as a kmd of Magus, girt in mys- 
tery and enigma ; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gihnan's 
house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain 
■whether oracles or jargon. 

The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or exci- 
tation of any sort, round their sage ; nevertheless access to 
him, if a youth did reverently wish it, was not difficult. 
He would stroll about the pleasant garden with you, sit in 
the pleasant rooms of the place, — perhaps take you to his 
own pecuhar room, high up, with a rearward view, which 
was the chief view of all. A really charming outlook, in 
fine weather. Close at hand, wide sweep of flowery leafy 
gardens, their few houses mostly hidden, the very chimney- 
pots vailed under blossomy umbrage, flowed gloriously 
down hill ; gloriously issuing in wide-tufted undulating 
plain-country, rich in all charms of field and town. Wav- 
ing blooming country of the brightest green ; dotted all 
over with handsome villas, handsome groves ; crossed by 
roads and human traffic, here inaudible or heard only as a 
musical hum : and behind all swam, under olive-tinted 
haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its 
domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the 
many memories attached to it hanging high over all. No- 
where, of its kind, could you see a grander prospect on a 
bright summer day, Avith the set of the air going south- 
ward, — southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not 
3/oit but the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk, 
concerning all conceivable or inconceivable things : and 
liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or failing 
"that, even a silent and patient human listener. He distin- 
guished himself to all that ever heard him as at least the 



COLERIDGE. < D 

most surprising talker extant in this vrorld, — and to some 
small minority, by no means to all, as the most excellent. 

The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty 
perhaps ; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full 
of sufferings ; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still 
sv/imming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other 
bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of massive 
weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep 
eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as oi inspira- 
tion ; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind 
of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and 
amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute ; 
expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He 
hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping 
attitude ; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively 
stept ; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which 
side of the garden-walk would suit him best, but continuall}'' 
shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A 
heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely much-suffering man. 
His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted itself 
into a plaintive snuffle and singsong ; he spoke as if preach- 
ing, — you would have said, preaching earnestly and also 
hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 
' object ' and ' subject,' terms of continual recurrence in 
the Kantean province ; and how he sung and snuffled them 
into " om-m-mject " and " sum-m-raject," with a kind of 
solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in 
his century or in any other, could be more surprising. 

Sterling, who assiduously attended him, with profound 
reverence, and was often with him by himself, for a good 



76 JOHN STERLUfQ. 

many months, gives a record of their first colloquy.* 
Their colloquies were numerous, and he had taken note of 
many ; but they are all gone to the fire, except this first, 
■which Mr. Hare has printed, — unluckily without date. It 
contains a number of ingenious, true and half true observa- 
tions, and is of course a faithful epitome of the things said ; 
but it gives small idea of Coleridge's way of talking ; — this 
one feature is perhaps the most recognizable, ' Our inter- 
view lasted for three hours, during which he talked two 
hours and three-quarters.' Nothing could be more copious 
than his talk ; and furthermore it was always virtually or 
literally, of the nature of a monologue ; suffering no inter- 
ruption, however reverent ; hastily putting aside all foreign 
additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires for eluci- 
dation, as well-meant superfluities which would never do. 
Besides, it was talk not flowing anywhither like a river, but 
spreading everywhither in inextricable currents and regur- 
gitations like a lake or sea ; terribly deficient in definite 
goal or aim, nay often in logical intelligibility ; what you 
Avere to believe or do, on any earthly or heavenly thing, 
obstinately refusing to appear from it. So that, most times, 
you felt logically lost ; swamped near to drowning in this 
tide of ingenious vocables, spreading out boundless as if to 
submerge the world. 

To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether 
you consent or not, can in the long-run be exhilarating to 
no creature ; how eloquent soever the flood of utterance 
-that is descending. But if it be withal a confused unintelli- 
gible flood of utterance, threatening to submerge all known 

* Biography by Hare, pp. xvi.-xxvi. 



COLERIDGE. 77 

landmarks of thought, and drown the world and 3^011 ! — I 
have heard Coleridge talk, with eager musical energj, two 
stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicate 
no meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers, — 
certain of whom, I for one, scill kept eagerly listening in 
hope ; the most had long before given up, and formed (if 
the room were large enough) secondary humming groups 
of their own. He began any where : you put some ques- 
tion to him, made some suggestive observation ; instead of 
answering this, or decidedly setting out towards answer of 
it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim- 
bladders, transcendental life-preservers and other precau- 
tionary and vehiculatory gear, for setting out ; perhaps 
did at last get under way, — but was swiftly solicited, turn- 
ed aside by the glance of some radiant new game on this 
hand or that, into new courses ; and ever into new ; and 
before long into all the Universe, where it was uncertain 
what game you would catch, or whether any. 

His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by irreso- 
lution : it disliked to be troubled with conditions, abstinen- 
ces, definite fulfillments ; — loved to wander at its own sweet 
will, and make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes 
a mere passive bucket for itself! He had knowledge about 
many things and topics, much curious reading ; but gener- 
ally all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the high 
seas of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kan- 
tean transcendentalism, with its ' sum-m-mjects' and ' om- 
m-mjects.' Sad enough ; for with such indolent impatience 
of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not the least 
talent for explaining this or any thing unknown to them ; 

and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide unintelligi- 
7* 



78 JOHN STERLING. 

ble deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless un- 
comfortable manner. 

Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze ; 
but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general ele- 
ment again. Balmy sunny islets, inlets of the blest and the 
intelligible ; — on which occasion those secondary humming 
groups would all cease humming, and hang breathless upon 
the eloquent words ; till once your islet got wrapt in the 
mist again, and they could recommence humming. Elo- 
q\ient artistically expressive words you always had ; pierc- 
ing radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals ; 
tones of noble pious sympathy, recognizable as pious though 
strangely colored, were never wanting long : but in general 
you could not call this aimless, cloud capt, cloud-based, 
lawlessly meandering human discourse of reason by the 
name of ' excellent talk,' but only of ' surprising;' and 
were reminded bitterly of Ilazlitt's account of it: " Excel- 
lent talker, very, — if you let him start from no premises 
and come to no conclusion." Coleridge was not without 
what talkers call wit, and there were touches of prickly 
sarcasm in him, contemptuous enough of the world and its 
idols and popular dignitaries ; he had traits even of poetic 
humor: but in general he seemed deficient in laughter; 
or indeed in sympathy for concrete human things either on 
the sunny or on the stormy side. One right peal of con- 
crete laughter at some convicted flesh-and blood absurdity, 
one burst of noble indignation at some injustice or depravi- 
ty, rubbing elbows with us on this solid E;irth, how strange 
would it have been in that Kautean haze-world, and how 
infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles and dim-melt- 
ing ghosts and shadows ! None such ever came. His life 



COLERIDGE. 79 

had been an abstract thinking and dreaming, idealistic, 
passed amid the ghosts of defunct bodies and of unborn 
ones. The moaning sing-song of that theosophico metaihy- 
sical monotony left on you, at last, a very dreary feeling. 

In close colloquy, flowing within narrower banks, I sup- 
pose he was more definite and apprehensible ; Sterling in 
after times did not complain of his uninteliigibility, or im- 
puted it only to the abstruse high nature of the' topics 
handled. Let us hope so, let us try to believe so I There 
is no doubt but Coleridge could speak plain words on things 
plain: his observations and responses on the ti'ivial matters 
that occurred were as simple as the commonest man's, or 
were even distinguished by superior simplicity as well as 
pertinency. " Ah, your tea is too cold, Mr. Coleridge !" 
mourned the good Mrs. Oilman once, in her kind, reveren- 
tial and yet protective manner, handing him a very tolera- 
ble though belated cup. " It's better than I deserve !" 
snuflSed he, in a low hoarse murmur, partly courteous, 
chiefly pious, the tone of which still abides with me : " It's 
better than I deserve !" 

But indeed, to the young ardent mind, instinct with 
pious nobleness, yet driven to the grim deserts of Radical- 
ism for a faith, his speculations had a charm much more 
than literary, a charm almost religious and projihetic. The 
constant gist of his discourse was lamentation over the 
sunk condition of the world ; which he recognized to be 
given up to Atheism and Materialism, full of mere sordid 
misbeliefs, raispursuits and misresults. All Science had 
become mechar.ical ; the science not of men, but of a kind 
of human beavers. Churches themselves had died away 
into a godless mechanical condition ; and stood there as 



80 JOHN STERLING. 

mere Cases of Articles, mere forms of Churches ; like the 
dried carcasses of once swift camels, which you find left 
witherin^^ in the thirst of the universal desert, — ghastly 
portents for the present, beneficent ships of the desert no 
more. Men's souls were blinded, hebetated ; sunk under 
the influence of Atheism and Materialism, and Hume and 
Voltaire : the world for the present was as an extinct Avorld, 
desertSd of God, and incapable of well-doing till it changed 
its heart and spirit. This, expressed I think with less of 
indignation and with more of long-drawn querulousness, was 
always recognizable as the ground-tone : — in which truly a 
pious young heart, driven into Radicalism and the opposi- 
tion party, could not but recognize a too sorrowful truth ; 
and ask of the Oracle, with all earnestness. What remedy, 
then? 

The remedy, though Coleridge himself professed to see 
it as in sunbeams, could not, except by processes unspeak- 
ably difficult, be described to you at all. On the whole, 
those dead Churches, this dead English Church especially, 
must be brought to life again. Why not ? It was not 
dead ; the soul of it, in this parched-up body, was tragi- 
cally asleep only. Atheistic Philosophy was true on its 
side, and Hume and Voltaire could on their own ground 
speak irrefragably for themselves against any Church : 
but lift the Church and them into a higher sphere of argu- 
ment tJiey died into inanition, the Church revivified itself 
into pristine florid vigor, — became once more a living ship 
of the "desert, and invincibly bore you over stock and stone. 
But how, but how ! By attending to the ' reason ' of man, 
said Coleridge, and duly chaining up the ' understanding' 
of man : the Vernunft (Reason) and Verstand (Under- 



COLERIDGE. 81 

standing) of the Germans, it all turnod upon these, if you 
could well understand them, — which you couldn't. For 
the rest, Mr. Coleridge had on the anvil various Books, 
especially was about to write one grand Book On the 
Logos, which would help to bridge the chasm for us. So 
much appeared, however : Churches, though proved false 
(as you had imagined.) were still true (as you were to 
imagine :) here was an Artist who could burn you up an 
old Church, root and branch ; and then as the Alchymists 
professed to do with organic substances in general, di>till 
you an ' Astral Spirit ' from the ashes, wliich was the very 
image of the old burnt article, its air-drawn counterpart, — 
this you still had, or might get, and draw uses from, if you 
could. Wait till the Book on the Logos were done ; — alas, 
till your own terrene eyes, blind with conceit and the dust 
of logic were purged, subtilized and spiritualized into the 
sharpness of vision recpiisite for discerning such an " om-m- 
mject." The ingenuous young English head, of those 
days, stood strangely puzzled by such revelations ; uncer- 
tain whether it were getting inspired, or getting infatuated 
into flat imbecility ; and strange eifulgence, of new day or 
else of deeper meteoric night, colored the horizon of the 
future for it. 

Let me not be unjust to this memorable man. Surely 
there was here, in his pious, ever laboring, subtle mind, a 
precious truth, or prefigurement of truth ; and yet a fatal 
delusion withal. Prefigurement that, in spite of beaver 
sciences and temporary spiritual hebetude and cecity, man 
and his Universe were eternally divine ; and tliat )io past 
nobleness, or revelation of the divine, could or would ever 
be lost to him. Most true, surely, and worthy of all accept- 



82 JOHN STERLING. 

ance. Good also to do what you can with old Churches 
and practical Sj'mbols of the Noble ; naj^ quit not the 
burnt ruins of them Avhile you find there is still gold to 
be dug there. Bat, on the whole, do not think you can, 
by logical alchymy, distill astral spirits from them ; or if 
you could, that said astral spirits, or defunct logical phan- 
tasms, could serve you in any thing. What the light of 
your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, 
pronounces incredible, — that, in God's name, leave uncred- 
ited ; at your peril do not try believing that. No subtlest 
hocus-pocus of ' reason ' versus ' understanding ' will avail 
for that feat ; — and it is terribly perilous to try it in these 



provmces 



The truth is, I now see, Coleridge's talk and specula- 
tion was the emblem of himself: in it as in him, a ray of 
heavenly inspiration struggled, in a tragically ineffectual 
degree, with the weakness of -flesh and blood. He says 
once, he ' had skirted the howling deserts of Infidelity ;' 
this was evident enough : but he had not had the courage, 
in defiance of pain and terror, to press resolutely across 
said deserts to the new firm lands of Faith beyond ; he 
preferred to create logical fatamorganas for himself on this 
hither side, and laboriously solace himself with these. 

To the man himself Nature had given, in high measure, 
the seeds of a noble endowment ; and to unfold it had been 
forbidden him. A subtle lynx-eyed intellect, tremulous 
pious sensibility to all good and all beautiful ; truly a ray 
of empyrean light ; — but imbedded in such weak laxity of 
character, in such indolences and esuiuences as had made 
strange work with it. Once more, the tragic story of a 
high endowment with an insufficient will. An eye to dis- 



COLERIDGE. ' 83 

cern the divineness of the Heaven's splendors and light- 
nings, the insatiable wish to revel in their godlike radiances 
and brilliances ; but no heart to front the scathing terrors 
of them, which is the first condition of your conquering an 
abiding-place there. The courage necessary for him, above 
all things, had been denied this man. His life, with such 
ray of the empyrean in it, Avas great and terrible to him ; 
and he had not valiantly grappled with it, he had fled from 
it ; sought refuge in vague daydreams, hollow compromises, 
in opium, in theosophic metaphysics. Harsh pain, danger, 
necessity, slavish harnessed toil, were of all things abhor- 
rent to him. And so the empyrean element, lying smoth- 
ered under the terrene, and yet inextinguishable there, 
made sad writhings. For pain, danger, difficulty, steady | 
slaving toil, and other highly disagreeable behests of des- 
tiny, shall in no wise be shirked by any brightest mortal 
that will approve himself loyal to his mission in this world ;^ 
nay precisely the higher he is, the deeper will be the disa-\ 
greeableness, and the detestability to flesh and blood, of \ 
the tasks laid on him ; and the heavier, too, and more trag- / 
ic, his penalties if he neglect them. / 

For the old Eternal Powers do Uve forever; nor do) 
their laws know any change, however we in our poor wigs 
and church tippets may attempt to read their laws. To 
steal into Heaven-, — by the modern method, of sticking 
ostrich-like your head into ftdlacies on Earth, equally as by 
the ancient and by all conceivable methods, — is forever 
forbidden. High-treason is the name of that attempt ; and 
it continues to be punished as such. Strange enough : 
here once more was a kind of Heaven-scaling Ixion ; and 
to him, as to the old one, the just gods were very stern ! 



84 JOHN STERLING. 

The ever-revolving, never-advancing Wheel (of a kind) 
was his, through life ; and from his Cloud Juno did not he 
too procreate strange Centaurs, spectral Pusejisms, rnon« 
strous illusory Hybrids, and ecclesiastical Chimeras, — 
which now roam the Earth in a very lamentable manner ! 



SPANISH EXILES. 85 



CHAPTER IX. 



SPANISH EXILES. 



This magical ingredient thrown into the wild cauldron of 
such a mind, which we have seen occupied hitherto with 
mere Ethnicism, Radicalism and revolutionary tumult, but 
hungering all along for something higher and better, was 
sure to be eagerly welcomed and imbibed, and could not 
fail to produce important fermentations there. Fermenta- 
tions ; important new directions, and withal important new 
perversions, in the spiritual life of this man, as it lias since 
done in the lives of so many. Here then is the new celes- 
tial manna we are all in quest of? This thrice-refined 
pabulum of transcendental moonshine ? Whoso eateth 
thereof, — yes, what, on the Avhole, will lie probably 
grow to ? 

Sterling never spoke much to me of his intercourse with 
Coleridge ; and when he did compare notes about him, it 
was usually rather in the way of controversial discussion 
than of narrative. So that, from my own resources, I can 
give no details of the business, nor specify any thing in it, 
except the general fact of an ardent attendance at High- 
gate continued for many months, which was impressively 
known to all Sterlin2,'s friends ; and am unable to assign 
even the limitary dates, Sterling's own papers on the sub- 
ject having all been destroyed by him. Inferences point to 
the end of 1828 as the beginning of this intercourse ; per- 
8 



86 JOHN STERLING. 

haps in 1829 it was at the highest point ; and ah-eacly in 
1830, when the intercourse itself was about to terminate, 
we have proof of the influences it was producing, — in the 
Novel of Arthur ConingBby, then on hand, the first and 
only Book that Sterling ever wrote. His writings hitherto 
had been sketches, criticisms, brief essays ; he was now 
trying it on a wider scale ; but not yet with satisfactory re- 
sults, and it proved to be his only trial in that form. 

He had already, as was intimated, given up his brief 
proprietorship of the Aihenceum ; the commercial indica- 
tion^, and state of sales and of costs, peremptorily ordering 
him to do so : the copyright went by sale or gift, I know 
not at what precise date, into other fitter hands ; and with 
the copyright all connection on the part of Sterling. To 
Athenmim Sketches had now (in 1829-30) succeeded 
Arthur Coningshy^ a Novel in three volumes ; indicating 
(when it came to light, a year or two afterwards) equally 
hasty and much more ambitious aims in Literature ; — 
giving strong evidence, too, of internal spiritual revulsions 
going painfully forward, and in particular of the impression 
Coleridge was producing on him. Without and within, it 
was a wild tide of things this ardent light young soul was 
afloat upon, at present ; and his outlooks into the future, 
whether for his spiritual or economic fortunes, were con- 
fused enough. 

Among his familiars in this period, I might have men- 
tioned one Charles Barton, formerly his fellow-student at 
Cambridge, now an amiable, cheerful, rather idle young 
fellow about Town ; Avho led the way into certain new expe- 
riences, and lighter fields, for Sterling. His Father, Lieut. 



SPANISH EXILES. * 87 

General Barton of the Lifeguards, an Irish landlord, I 
think in Fermanagh County, and a man of connections 
about Court, lived in a certain figure here in Town ; had a 
wife of fashionable habits, with other sons, and also daugh- 
ters, bred in this sphere. These, all of them, were amiable, 
elegant and pleasant people ; — such was especially an eld- 
est daughter, Susannah Barton, a stately blooming black- 
eyed young woman, attractive enough in form and charac- 
ter ; full of gay softness, of indolent sense and enthusiasm ; 
about Sterling's own age, if not a little older. In this 
house, which opened to him, more decisively than his 
Father's a new stratum of society, and where his reception 
for Charles's sake and his own was of the kindest, he liked 
very well to be ; and spent, I suppose, many of his vacant 
half-hours, lightly chatting with the elders or the youngsters, 
— doubtless with the young lady too, though as yet without 
particular intentions on either side. 

Nor with all the Coleridge fermentation, was democratic 
Radicalism by any means given up ; — though how it was to 
live if the Coleridgean moonshine took effect, might have 
been an abstruse question. Hitherto, while said moon- 
shine was but taking effect, and coloring the outer surface 
of things without quite penetrating into the heart, democrat- 
ic Liberalism, revolt against superstition and oppression, 
and help to whosoever would revolt, was still the grand 
element in Sterling's creed ; and practically he stood, not 
ready only, but full of alacrity to fulfill all its behests. We 
heard long since of the ' black dragoons,' — whom doubtless 
the new moonshine had considerably silvered over into new 
hues, by this time : — but here now, while Radicalism is 
tottering for him and threatening to crumble, comes sud- 



88 JOHN STERLING. 

denly the grand consummation and explosion of Radicalism 
in his Hfe ; \\hcreby, all at once, Radicalisili exhausted and 
ended itself, and appeared no mure there. 

In those years a visible section of the London population, 
and consj)icuous out of all proportion to its size or value, 
■was a small knot of Spaniards, who had souo;ht shelter here 
as Political Refugees. " Political Refugees :" a tragic 
sncccfsion of that class is one of the possessions of England 
in our time. Six and-twenty years ago, when I first saw 
London, I remember those unfortunate S) aniards among 
the new phenomena. Daily in the cold spring air, under 
skies so unlike their own, you could see a group of fifty or 
a hundred stately tragic figures, in proud threadbare 
cloaks ; perambulating mostly with closed lips, the broad 
pavements of Euston Square and the regions about St. 
Pancras new Chuich. Their lodging was chiefly in Soraers 
Town, as I understood ; and those open pavements about 
St. Pancras Church were the general place of rendezvous. 
Q'hey spcke little or no English; knew nobody, could em- 
ploy themselves on nothing, in this new scene. Old steel- 
gray heads, many of them ; the shaggy, thick, blue-black 
hair of others struck you ; their brown complexion, dusty 
look of suppressed fire, in general their tragic condition as 
of caged Numidian lions. 

That particular Flight of Unfortunates has long since 
fled again, and vanished ; and new have come and fled. 
In this convulsed rovolutionai-y epoch which already lasts 
above sixty years, A\liat tragic flights of such have we not 
seen arrive on the one safe coast which is open to them, as 
they get successively vanquished, and chased into exile to 



SPANISH EXILES. 89 

avoid worse ! Swarm after swarm, of ever new complexion, 
from Spain as from other countries, is thrown off, in those 
ever-recurring paroxysms ; and will continue to be thrown 
off. As there could be (suggests Linneeus) a ' flower- 
clock,' measuring the hours of the day, and the months of 
the year, by the kinds of flowers that go to sleep and 
awaken, that blow into beauty and fade into dust : so in 
the great Revolutionary Horologe, one might mark the 
years and epochs by the successive kinds of exiles that 
walk London streets, and, in grim silent manner, demand 
pity from us and reflections from us. This then extant 
group of Spanish Exiles was the Trocadero swarm, thrown 
off in 1823, in the Eiego and Quirogas quarrel. These 
were they whom Charles Tenth had, by sheer force, driven 
from their constitutionalisms and their Trocadero fortresses, 
— Charles Tenth, who himself was soon driven out, mani- 
foldly by sheer force ; and had to head his own swarm of 
fugitives ; and has now himself quite vanished, and given 
place to others. For there is no end of them ; propelling 
and propelled ! — 

Of these poor Spanish Exiles, now vegetating about 
Somers Town, and painfully beating the pavement in 
Euston Square, the acknowledged chief was General 
Torrijos, a man of high qualities and fortunes, still in the 
vigor of his years, and in these desperate circumstances 
refusing to despair ; Avith whom Sterling had, at this time, 
become intimate. 



8# 



90 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER X. 



TORRIJOS. 



ToRRTJOS, who had now in 1829 been here some four or 
five years, having come over in 1821, had from the first 
enjoyed a superior reception in Eugh^.nd. Possessing not 
only a language to speak, which few of the others did, but 
manifold experiences courtly, military, diplomatic, with fine 
natural faculties, and high Spanish manners tempered into 
cosmopolitan, he had been welcomed in various circles of 
society ; and found, perhaps he alone of those Spaniards, a 
certain human companionship among persons of some 
standing in this country. With the elder Sterlings, among 
others, he had made acquaintance ; became familiar in the 
social circle at South Place, and was much esteemed there. 
With Madam Torrijos, Avho also was a person of amiable 
and distinguished qualities, an affectionate friendship grew 
up on the p?rt of Mrs. Sterling, which ended only with the 
death of these two ladies. John Sterling, on arriving in 
London from his University work, naturally inherited what 
he liked to take up of this relation : and in the lodgings iu 
Regent Street, and the democratico literary element there, 
Torrijos became a very prominent, and at length almost the 
central object. 

The man himself, it is well known, was a valiant gallant 
man ; of lively intellect, of noble chivalrous character : 
fine talents, fine accomplishments, all grounding themselves 



TORRTJOS. 91 

on a certain rugged veracity, recommenclecl him to the 
disceining. He had begun youth in the Court of Ferdi- 
nand ; had gone on in Wellington and other arduous, 
victorious and unvictorious, soldierings ; familiar in camps 
and council-rooms, in presence-chambers and in prisons. 
lie knew romantic Spain ; — he was himself, standing withal 
in the vanguard of Freedom's fight, a kind of living romance. 
Infinitely interesting to John Sterling, for one. 

It was to Torrijos that the poor Spaniards of Somers 
Town looked mainly, in their helplessness, for every species 
of help. Torrijos, it was hoped, would yet lead them into 
Spain and glorious victory there ; meanwhile here in Eng- 
land, under defeat, he was their captain and sovereign in 
another painfully inverse sense. To whom, in extremity, 
everybody might apply. When all present resources failed, 
and the exchequer was quite out, there still remained Tor- 
rijos. Torrijos has to find new resources for his destitute 
patriots, find loans, find Spanish lesSons for them among his 
English friends : in all which charitable operations, it need 
not be said John Sterling was his foremost man ; zealous to 
empty his own purse for the object ; impetuous in rushing 
hither or thither to enlist the aid of others, and find lessons 
or something that would do. His friends, of course, had 
to assist ; the Bartons, among others, were wont to assist ; — 
and I have heard that the fair Susan, stirring up her indo- 
lent enthusiasm into practicality, was very successful in 
finding Spanish lessons, and the like, for these distressed 
men. Sterling and his friends were yet new in this busi- 
ness ; but Torrijos and the others were getting old in it, — 
and doubtless weary and almost desperate of it. They had 



92 JOHN STERLING. 

now been seven 3'ears in it, many of them ; and were ask- 
ing, When will the end be ? 

Torrijos is described as a man of excellent discernment : 
who knows how long he had repressed the unreasonable 
schemes of his followers, and turned a deaf ear to the 
temptings of fallacious hope ? But there comes at length a 
sum total of oppressive burdens which is intolerable, which 
tempts the wisest towards fallacies for relief. These weary 
groups, pacing the Euston Square paveuient, had often said 
in their despair, " Were not death in battle better ? Here 
are we slowly mouldering into nothingness ; there we 
might reach it rapidly, in flaming splendor. Flame, either 
of victory to Spain and us, or of a patriot death, the sure 
harbinger of victory to Spain. Flame fit to kindle a fire 
which no Ferdinand, with all his Inquisitions and Charles- 
Tenths, could put out." Enough, in the end of 1829, 
Torrijos himself had yielded to this pressure ; and hoping 
against hope, persuaded himself that if he could but land in 
the South of Spain with a small patriot band well armed 
and well resolved, a band carrying fire in its heart, — then 
Spain, all inflammable as touchwood, and groaning indig- 
nantly under its brutal tyrant, might blaze wholly into 
flame round him, and incalculable victory be won. Such 
was his conclusion ; not sudden, yet surely not deliberate 
either, — desperate rather, and forced on by circumstances. 
He thought with himself that, considering Somers Tovrn 
and considering Spain, the terrible chance was worth try- 
ing ; that this big game of Fate, go how it might, was one 
which the omens credibly declared he and these poor Span- 
iards ought to play. 

His whole industries and energies were thereupon bent 



TORRIJOS. 93 

towards starting the said game ; and his thought and con- 
tinual speech and song now was, That if he had a few 
thousand pounds to buy anus, to freight a ship and make 
the other preparations, he and these poor gentlemen, and 
Spain and the world, were made men and a saved Spain 
and world. What talks and consultations in the apartment 
in Regent Street, during those winter days of 1829-30 ; 
setting into open conflagration the young democracy that 
was wont to assemble there ! Of which there is now left 
next to no remembrance. For Sterling never spoke a word 
of this affair in after days, nor was any of the actors much 
tempted to speak. We can understand too well that here 
were young fervid hearts in an explosive condition ; young 
rash heads, sanctioned by a man's experienced head. Here 
at last shall enthusiasm and theory become practice and 
fact ; fiery dreams are at last permitted to realize them- 
selves ; and now is the time or never ! — How the Coleridge 
moonshine comported itself amid these hot telluric flames, 
or whether it had not yet begun to play there (which I 
rather doubt), must be left to conjecture. 

Mr. Hare speaks of Sterling ' sailing over to St. Valery 
in an open boat along with others,' upon one occasion, in 
this enterprise ; — in the final English scene of it, I sup- 
pose. Which is very possible. Unquestionably there was 
adventure enough of other kinds for it, and running to and 
fro with all his speed on behalf of it, during these months 
of his history ! Money was subscribed, collected : the 
young Cambridge democrats were all a-blaze to assist 
Torrijos ; nay certain of them decided to go with him, — 
and went. Only, as yet, the funds were rather incom- 
plete. And here, as I learn from a good hand, is the 



94 JOHN STERLING. 

secret history of their becoming complete. Which, as we 
are upon the subject, I had better give. But for the 
following circumstance, they had perhaps never been com- 
pleted ; nor had the rash enterprise, or its catastrophe, 
so influential on the rest of Sterling's life, taken place 
at all. 

A certain Lieutenant Robert Boyd, of the Indian Army, 
an Ulster Irishman, a cousin of Sterling's, had received 
soHoe affront, or otherwise taken some disgust in that ser- 
vice ; had thrown up his commission in consequence ; and 
returned home, about this time, with intent to seek another 
course of hfe. Having only, for outfit, these impatient 
ardors, some experience in Indian drill-exercise, and five 
thousand pounds of inheritance, he found the enterprise 
attended with difficulties ; and was somewhat at a loss how 
to dispose of himself. Some young Ulster comrade, in a 
partly similar situation, had pointed out to him that there 
lay in a certain neighboring creek of the Irish coast, a 
worn-out royal gun-brig condemned to sale, to be had dog- 
cheap : this he proposed that they two, or in fact Boyd with 
his five thousand pounds, should buy ; that they should 
refit and arm and man it ; — and sail a-privateering " to the 
Eastern Archipelago," Philippine Isles, or I know not 
where ; and so conquer the golden fleece. 

Boyd naturally paused a little at this great proposal ; 
did not quite reject it ; came across, with it and other fine 
projects and impatiences fermenting in his head, to London, 
there to see and consider. It was in the months when the 
Torrijos enterprise was in the birth-throes ; crying wildly 
for capital, of all things. Boyd naturally spoke of his pro- 



TORRUOS. 95 

jects to Sterling, — of his gun-brig lying in the Irish creek, 
among others. Sterling naturally said, " If you want an 
adventure of the Sea-king sort, and propose to lay your 
money and your life into such a game, here is Torrijos and 
Spain at his back ; here is a golden fleece to conquer, 
worth twenty Eastern Archipelagos." — Boyd and Torrijos 
quickly met ; quickly bargained. Boyd's money was to 
go in purchasing, and storing with a certain stock of arms 
and etceteras, a small ship in the Thames, Avhich should 
carry Boyd with Ton-ijos and the adventurers to the south 
coast of Spain ; and there, the game once played and won, 
Boyd was to have promotion enough, — ' the colonelcy of a 
Spanish cavalry regiment,' for one express thing. What 
exact share Sterhng had in this negotiation, or whether he 
did not even take the prudent side and caution Boyd to be 
wary, I know not ; but it was he that brought the parties 
together ; and all his friends knew, in silence, that to the 
end of his life he painfully remembered that fact. 

And so a ship was hired, or purchased, in the Thames ; 
due furnishings began to be executed in it ; arms and 
stores were gradually got on board ; Torrijos with his Fifty 
picked Spaniards, in the meanwhile, getting ready. This 
was in the spring of 1830. Boyd's 5000Z. was the grand 
nucleus of finance : but vigorous subscription was carried 
on Ukewise in Sterling's young democratic circle, or wher- 
ever a member of it could find access ; not without consid- 
erable result, and with a zeal that may be imagined. Nay, 
as above hinted, certain of these young men decided, not 
to give their money only, but themselves along with it, as 
democratic volunteers and soldiers of progress ; among 
whom, it need not be said, Sterling intended to be foremost. 



96 JOHN STERLINa. 

Busy weeks with liim, those spring ones of the year 1S30! 
Through this small Note, accidentally preserved to us, ad- 
dressed to his friend Barton, we obtain a curious glance 
into the subterranean workshop: 

* To Charles Barton^ Usq., Dorset Sq., JRegenVs Park. 

[No date ; apparently Marcli or February, 1830 ] 

' My Dear Ciiakles, — I have wanted to see you to talk 
to you about my Foreign affairs. If you are going to be in 
London for a few days, I believe you can be very useful to 
me at a considerable expense and trouble to yourself, in the 
way of buying accoutrements ; inter alia^ a sword and a 
saddle, — not, you will understand, for my own use. 

' Things are going on very well, but are very, even 
frightfully near ; only be quiet ! Pray would you, in case 
of necessity, take a free passage to Holland, next week or 
the week after ; stay two or three days, and come back, 

all expenses paid ? If you write to B at Cambridge, 

tell him above all things to hold his tongue. If you are 
near Palace Yard tomorrow before two, pray come to see 
me. Do not come on purpose ; esp.ecially as I may per- 
haps be away, and at all events shall not be there until 
eleven, nor [lerhaps till rather later. 

' I fear I shall have alarmed your Mother by my irrup- 
tion. Forgive me for that and all my exactions from you. 
If the next month were over, I should not have to trouble 
any one. — Yours affectionately, 

J. Sterling.' 



TORBIJOS. 97 

Busy weeks indeed ; and a glowing smithy-liglit coming 
through the chinks ! — The romance of Arthur Coningsby 
lay written, or half-written, in his desk ; and here, in his 
heart and among his hands, was an acted romance and un- 
known catastrophes keeping pace with that. 

Doubts from the doctors, for his health was getting omi- 
nous, threw some shade over the adventure. Reproachful 
reminiscences of Coleridge and Theosophy were natural 
too ; then fond regrets for Literature and its glories : if 
you act your romance, how can you also write it ? Re- 
grets, and reproachful reminiscences, from Art and Theos- 
ophy ; perhaps some tenderer regrets withal. A crisis in 
life had come ; when, of innumerable possibilities one possi- 
bility was to be elected king, and to swallow all the rest, 
the rest of course made noise enough, and swelled them- 
selves to their biggest. 

Meanwhile the ship was fast getting ready : on a certain 
day, it was to drop quietly down the Thames ; then touch 
at Deal, and take on board Torrijos and his adventurers, 
who were to be in waiting and on the outlook for them 
there. Let every man lay in his accoutrements, then ; let 
every man make his packages, his arrangements and fare- 
wells. Sterling went to take leave of Miss Barton. " You 
are going, then ; to Spain ? To rough it amid the storms 
of war and perilous insurrection ; and with that weak 
health of yours ; and — we shall never see you more, then ?" 
Miss Barton, all her gayety gone, the dimpling softness be- 
come liquid sorrow and the musical ringing voice one wail 
of woe, ' burst into tears,' — so I have it on authority : — 
here was one possibility about to be strangled that made 
9 



98 JOHN STERLING. 

unexpected noise ! Sterling's interview ended in the offer 
of his hand, and the acceptance of it ; — any sacrifice to get 
rid of this horrid Spanish business, and save the health and 
life of a gifted young man so precious to the world and to 
another ! 

' 111 health,' as often afterwards in Sterling's life, when 
the excuse was real enough but not the chief excuse ; ' ill 
health, and insuperable obstacles and engagements,' had to 
bear the chief brunt in apologizing : and, as Sterling's 
actual presence, or that of any Englishman except Boyd 
and his money, was not in the least vital to the adventure, 
his excuse was at once accepted. The English connections 
and subscriptions are a given fact, to be presided over by 
what English volunteers there are : and as for Englishmen, 
the fewer Englishmen that go, the larger will be the share 
of influence for each. The other adventurers, Torrijos 
among them in due readiness, moved silently one by one 
down to Deal : Sterling, superintending the naval hands, 
on board their ship in the Thames, was to see the last finish 
given to every thing in that department ; then, on the set 
evening, to drop down quietly to Deal, and there say 
Andafe con Dios, and return. 

Behold ! Just before the set evening came, the Spanish 
Envoy at this Court has got notice of what is going on : the 
Spanish Envoy, and of course the British Foreign Secre- 
tary, and of course also the Thames Police. Armed men 
spring suddenly on board, one day, while Sterling is there ; 
declare the ship seized and embargoed in the King's name ; 
nobody on board to stir, till he has given some account of 
himself in due time and place ! Huge consternation, natu- 
rally, from stem to stern. Sterling, whose presence of 



TORRIJOS. 99 

mind seldom forsook him, casts his eye over the River and 
its craft ; sees a wherry, privately signals it, drops rapidly 
on board of it : " Stop !" fiercely interjects the marine 
policeman from the ship's deck. — " Why stop ? What use 
have you for me, or I for you ?" and the oars begin play- 
ing. — " Stop, or I'll shoot you !" cries the marine police- 
man, drawing a pistol. — " No, you won't." — " I will !" — 
" If you do, you'll be hanged at the next Maidstone assizes, 
then ; that's all,"— and Sterling's wherry shot rapidly 
ashore ; and out of this perilous adventure. 

That same night he posted down to Deal ; disclosed to 
the Torrijos party what catastrophe had come. No passage 
Spain-ward frpm the Thames ; well if arrestment do not 
suddenly come from the Thames ! It was on this occasion, 
I suppose, that the passage in the open boat to St. Valery 
occurred ; — speedy flight in what boat or boats, open or 
shut, could be got at Deal on the sudden. Sterling himself, 
according to Hare's authority, actually went with them so 
far. Enough, they got shipping, as private passengers in 
one craft or the other ; and, by degrees or at once, arrived 
all at Gibralter, — Boyd, one or two young democrats of 
Eegent Street, the fifty picke-d Spaniards, and Torrijos, — 
safe, though without arras ; still in the early part of the 
year. 



100 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER XI. 

MARRIAGE : ILL-HEALTH ; WEST-INDIES. 

Sterling's outlooks and occupations, now that his Spanish 
friends were gone, must have been of a rather miscellaneous 
confused description. lie had the enterprise of a married 
life close before hitn : and as yet no profession, no fixed 
pursuit whatever. His bealth was already very threaten- 
ing ; often such as to disable him from present activity, 
and occasion the gravest apprehensions ; practically block- 
ing up all important c urses whatsoever, and rendering the 
future, if-even life were lengthened and he had any future, 
an insolubility for him. Parliament was shut, public life 
was shut : Literature, — if, alas, any solid fruit could lie in 
Literature ! 

Or. perhaps one's health Avould mend, after all ; and 
many things be better than was hoped ! Sterling was not 
of a despondent temper, or given in any measure to lie 
down and indolently moan : I fancy he walked briskly 
enough into this tempestuous-looking future ; not heeding 
too much its thunderous aspects ; doing swiftly, for the day, 
what his hand found to do. Arthur Coningshy, I suppose, 
lay on the anvil at present ; visits to Coleridge were now 
again more possible : grand news from Torrijos might be 
looked for, though only small yet came : — nay here, in the 
hot July, is France, at least, all thrown into volcano again ! 
Here are the miraculous Three Days ; heralding, in thun- 



marriage: ill-health. 101 

der, great things to Torrijos and others ; filling with bab- 
blement and vaticination the mouths and hearts of all 
democratic men. 

So rolled along, in tumult of chaotic remembrance and 
uncertain hope, in manifold emotion, and the confused 
struggle (for Sterling as for the world) to extricate the 
New from the falling ruins of the Old, the summer and 
autumn of 1830. From Gibralter and Torrijos, the tidings 
were vague, unimportant and discouraging: attempt on 
Cadiz, attempt on the lines of St. Roch, those attempts, or 
rather resolutions to attempt, had died in the birth, or 
almost before it. Men blamed Torrijos, little knowing his 
impediments. Boyd was still patient at his post ; others of 
the young English (on the strength of the subscribed mon- 
eys) were said to be thinking of tours, — perhaps in the 
Sierra Morena and neighboring Quixote regions. From 
that Torrijos enterprise it did not seem that any thing con- 
siderable would come. 

On the edge of winter, here at home. Sterling was mar- 
ried : ' at Christchurch, Marylebone, 2d November 1830,' 
say the records. His blooming, kindly and true-hearted 
Wife had not much money, nor had he as yet any : but 
friends on both sides were bountiful and hopeful ; had made 
up, for the young couple, the foundations of a modestly 
effective household ; and in the future there lay more sub- 
stantial prospects. On the finance side Sterling never had 
any thing to suffer. His Wife, though somewhat languid, 
and of indolent humor, was a graceful, pious-minded, honor- 
able and affectionate woman ; she could not much support 
him in the ever-shifting struggles of his life, but she faith- 
9* 



102 JOHN STERLING. 

fully attended him in them, and lovally marched by his side 
through the changes and nomadic pilgrimings, of which 
many were appointed him in his short course. 

Unhappily a few weeks after his marriage, and before 
any household was yet set up, he fell dangerously ill ; worse 
in health than he had ever yet been : so many agitations 
crowded into the last few months had been too much for 
him. He fell into dangerous pulmonary illness, sank ever 
deeper ; lay for many weeks in his Father's house utterly 
prostrate, his young Wife and his Mother watching over 
him ; friends, sparingly admitted, long despairing of his 
life. All prospects in this world were now apparently shut 
upon him. 

After a while, came hope again, and kindlier symptoms : 
but the doctors intimated that there lay consumption in the 
question, and that perfect recovery was not to be looked 
for. For weeks he liad been confined to bed ; it was sev- 
eral months before he could leave his sick-room, where the 
visits of a few friends had much cheered him. And now 
when delivered, readmitted to the air of day again, — weak 
as he was, and with such a liability still lurking in him, — 
what his young partner and he were to do, or whitherward 
to turn for a good course of life, was by no means too ap- 
parent. 

One of his Mother Mrs. Edward Sterling's Uncles, a 
Conyngham from Derry, had, in the course of his indus- 
trious and adventui'ous life, realized large property in the 
West Indies, — a valuable Sugar-estate, with its ecjuipments, 
in the Island of St. Vincent ; — from which Mrs. Sterling 



WEST INDIES. 103 

and her family were now, and had heen for some years 
before her Uncle's decease, deriving important benefits. I 
have heard, it was then worth some ten thousand pounds a 
year to the parties interested. Anthony Sterling, John, 
and another a cousin of theirs were ultimately to be heirs, 
in equal proportions. The old gentleman, always kind to 
his kindred, and a brave and solid man though somewhat 
abrupt in his ways, had lately died ; leaving a settlement 
to this effect, not without some intricacies, and almost ca- 
prices, in the conditions attached. 

This property, which is still a valuable one, was Ster- 
ling's chief pecuniary outlook for the distant future. Of 
course it well deserved taking care of; and if the eye of 
the master were upon it, of course too (according to the 
adage) the cattle would fatten better. As the warm cli- 
mate was favorable to pulmonary complaints, and Sterling's 
occupations were so shattered to pieces and his outlooks 
here so waste and vague, why should not he undertake this 
duty for himself and others ? 

It was fixed upon as the eligiblest course. A visit to 
St. Vincent, perhaps a permanent residence there : he 
went into the project with his customary impetuosity ; his 
young Wife cheerfully consenting, and all manner of new 
hopes clustering round it. There are the rich tropical 
sceneries, the romance of the torrid zone with its new skies 
and seas and lands : there are Blacks, and the Slavery 
question to be investigated ; there are the bronzed Whites 
and Yellows, and their strange new way of life : by all 
means let us go and try ! — Arrangements being completed, 
so soon as his strength had sufficiently recovered, and the 



104 JOHN STERLING. 

harsh spring winds had sufficiently abated, Sterling with 
his small household set sail for St. Vincent ; and arrived 
without accident. His first child, a son Edward, now liv- 
ing and grown to manhood, was born there, ' at Brighton 
in the Island of St. Vincent,' in the fall of that year, 
1831. 



ISLAND OP ST. VINCENT. 105 



CHAPTER XII. 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 



Sterling found a pleasant residence, with all its adjuncts, 
ready for him, at Colonarie, in this ' volcanic Isle ' under 
the hot sun. An interesting Isle : a place of rugged 
chasms, precipitous gnarled heights, and the most fruitful 
hollows ; shaggy everywhere with luxuriant vegetation ; 
set under magnificent skies, in the mirror of the summer 
seas ; offering everywhere the grandest sudden outlooks 
and contrasts. His letters represent a placidly cheerful 
riding life ; a pensive humor, but the thunderclouds all 
sleeping in the distance. Good reh\tions with a few neigh- 
boring planters ; indifference to the noisy political and 
other agitations of the rest: friendly, by no means romantic 
appreciation of the Blacks ; quiet prosperity economic and 
domestic : on the whole a healthy and recommendable way 
of life, with Literature very much in abeyance in it. 

He writes to Mr. Hare (date not given) : ' The land- 
scapes around me here are noble and lovely as any that 
can be conceived on Earth. How indeed could it be 
otherwise, in a small Island of volcanic mountains, far 
within the Tropics, and perpetually covered with the 
richest vegetation ?' The moral aspect of things is by no 
means so good ; but neither is that without its fair features. 
' So far as I see, the Slaves here are cunning, deceitful 



106 JOHN STERLING. 

and idle ; "without any great aptitude for ferocious crimes, 
and with very little scruple at committing others. But I 
have seen them much only in very favorable circumstances. 
They are, as a body, decidedly unfit for freedom ; and if 
left, as at present, completely in the hands of their masters, 
■will never become so, unless through the agency of the 
Methodists.'* 

In the Autumn came an immense hurricane ; with new 
and indeed quite perilous experiences of West-Indian life. 
This hasty Letter, addressed to his Mother, is not intrin- 
sically his remarkablest from St. Vincent : but the body of 
fact delineated in it being so much the greatest, we will 
quote it in preference. A West-Indian tornado, as John 
Sterling witnesses it, and with vivid authenticity describes 
it, may be considered worth looking at. 

* To Mrs. Sterling^ South Place, Knightshridge, London. 

' Brighton, St. Vincent, August 28, 1831. 

' My dear Mother, — The packet came in yesterday ; 
bringing me some Newspapers, a Letter from my Father, 
and one from Anthony, with a few lines from you. I 
wrote, some days ago, a hasty Note to my Father, on the 
chance of its reaching you through Grenada sooner than 
any communication by the packet ; and in it I spoke of the 
great misfortune which had befallen this Island and Barba- 
does, but from which all those you take an interest in have 
happily escaped unhurt. 

' From the day of our arrival in the West Indies until 
Thursday the 11th instant, which will long be a memorable 

* Biography (by Mr. Hare), p. xli. 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 107 

day with us, I had been doing my best to get ourselves 
estabhshed comfortably ; and I had at last bought the 
materials for making some additions to the house. But on 
the morning I have mentioned, all that I had exerted my- 
self to do, nearly all the property both of Susan and myself, 
and the very house we lived in, were suddenly destroyed 
by a visitation of Providence far more terrible than any I 
have ever witnessed. 

' When Susan came from her room, to breakfast, at eight 
o'clock, I pointed out to her the extraordinary height and 
violence of the surf, and the singular appearance of the 
clouds of heavy rain sweeping down the valleys before us. 
At this time I had so little apprehension of what was 
coming, that I talked of riding down to the shore when the 
storm should abate, as I had never seen so fierce a sea. 
In about a quarter of an hour the House Negroes came in, 
to close the outside shutters of the windows. They knew 
that the plaintain-trees about the Negro houses had been 
blown down in 'the night; and had told the maid-servant 
Tyrrell, but I had heard nothing of ic. A very few 
minutes after the closing of the windows, I found that the 
shutters of Tyrrell's room, at the south and commonly the 
most sheltered end of the House, were giving away. I 
tried to tie them ; but the silk handkerchief which I used 
soon gave way ; and as I had neither hammer, boards nor 
nails in the house, I could do nothing more to keep out the 
tempest. I found, in pushing at the leaf of the shutter, 
that the wind resisted, more as if it had been a stone wall 
or a mass of iron, than a mere current of air. There were 
one or two people outside trying to fasten the windows, 
and I went out to help ; but we had no tools at hand : one 



108 JOHN STERLING. 

man was blown down the hill in front of the house, before 
my face ; and the other and myself had great difficulty in 
getting back again inside the door. The rain on my face 
and hands felt like so much small shot I'rom a gun. There 
was great exertion necessary to shut the door of the house. 

' The windows at the end of the large room were now 
giving waj ; and I suppose it was about nine o'clock, when 
the hurricane burst them in, as if it had been a discharge 
from a batterj of heavy cannon. The shutters were first 
forced open, and the wind fastened them back to the wall ; 
and then the panes of glass were smashed by the mere 
force of the gale, without any thing having touched them. 
Even now I was not at all sure the house would go. My 
books, I saw, were lost ; for the rain poured past the book- 
cases, as if it had been the Colonarie River. But we 
carried a good deal of furniture into the passage at the 
entrance ; we set Susan there on a sofa, and the Bh^ck 
Housekeeper was even attempting to get her some break- 
fast. The house, however, began to shake se violently, and 
the rain was so searching, that she could not stay there 
long. She went into her own room ; and I staid to see 
what could be done. 

' Under the forepart of the house, there are cellars built 
of stone, but not arched. To these, however, there was no 
access except on the outside ; and I knew from my own 
experience that Susan could not have gone a step beyond 
the door, without being carried away by the storm, and 
probably killed on the spot. The only chance seemed to 
be that of breaking through the floor. But when the old 
Cook and myself resolved on this, we found that we had no 
instrument with which it would be possible to do it. It 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 



109 



was now clear that we had only God to trust in. The front 
windows were giving way with successive crashes, and the 
lloor shook as you may have seen a carpet on a gusty day 
in London. I went into our bed-room ; where I found 
Susan, Tyrrell, and a little Colored girl of seven or eight 
years old ; and told them that we should probably not be 
alive in half an hour. I could have escaped, if I had 
chosen to go alone, by crawling on the ground either into 
the kitchen, a separate stone building at no great distance, 
or into the open fields away from trees or houses ; but 
Susan could not have gone a yard. She became quite 
calm when she knew the Avorst ; and she sat on my knee 
in what seemed the safest corner of the room, while every 
blast was bringing nearer and nearer the moment of our 
seemingly certain destruction. 

' The house was under two parallel roofs ; and the one 
next the sea, which sheltered the other, and us who were 
under the other, went off, I suppose about ten o'clock. 
After my old plan, I will give you a sketch, from which you 
may perceive how we were situated : 



1 — - — i— 

e 


I 1 1 1 1 

d b b a- 


- 


c 

a- 


/ 1 




g a 


M '■ 


' d , 


: — I— — 



^ r 



IZL 



1 h 



' The a, a are the windows that were first destroyed ; 
h went next ; ray books were between the windows h, and 
on the wall opposite to them. The lines c and d mark the 
10 



110 JOHN STERLING. 

directions of the two roofs ; e is the room in ^Yhich we 
"were, and 2 is a plan of it on a larger scale. Look now at 
2 : a is the bed ; c, e the two wardrobes ; h the corner in 
which we were. I was sitting in an arm-chair, holding my 
Wife ; and Tjrrell and the little Black child were close to 
us. We had given up all notion of surviving ; and only 
waited for the fall of the roof to perish together. 

* Before long the roof w^ent. Most of the materials, 
however, were cariied clear away : one of the large couples 
Avas caught on the bed-post marked d, and held fast by the 
iron spike ; while the end of it hung over our heads : had 
the beam fallen an inch on either side of the bed-post, it 
must necessarily have crushed us. The walls did not go 
with the roof; and we remained for half an hour, alter- 
nately praying to God, and watching them as they bent, 
creaked, and shivered before the storm. 

' Tyrrell and the child, when the roof was off, made 
their way through the remains of the partition, to the 
outer door ; and with the help of the people who were 
looking for us, got into the kitchen. A good while after 
they were gone, and before we knew any thing of their 
fate, a Negro suddenly came upon us ; and the sight of 
him gave us a hope of safety. When the people learned 
that we were in danger, and while their own huts were 
fl_ying about their ears, they crowded to help us ; and the 
old Cook urged them on to our rescue. He made five 
attempts, after saving Tyrrell, to get to us ; and four Jimes 
he was blown down. The fifth time he, and the Negro we. 
first saw, reached the house. The space they had to 
traverse was not above twenty yards of level ground, if so 
much. In another minute or two, the Overseers, and a 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. Ill 

crowd of Negroes, most of Avhom had come on their hands 
and knees, were surrounding us ; and with their help, 
Susan was carried round to the end of the house ; where 
they broke open the cellar window, and placed her in com- 
parative safety. The force of the hurricane was, by this 
time, a good deal diminished, or it would have been impos- 
sible to stand before it. 

' But the wind was still terrific ; and the rain poured 
into the cellars through the floor above. Susan, Tyrrell, 
and a crowd of Negroes remained under it, for more than 
two hours : and I w'as long afraid that the wet and cold 
would kill her, if she did not perish more violently. Happi- 
ly we had wme and spirits at hand, and she was much nerved 
by a tumbler of claret. As soon as I saw her in compara- 
tive security, I went off with one of the Overseers down to 
the Works, where the greater number of the Negroes were 
collected, that we might see wdiat could be done for them. 
They were wretched enough, but no one was hurt; and I 
ordered them a dram apiece, which seemed to give them a 
good deal of consolation. 

' Before I could make my way back, the hurricane be- 
came as bad as at first : and I was obliged to take shelter 
for half an hour in a ruined Negro-house. This, however, 
was the last of its extreme violence. By one o'clock, even 
the rain had in a great degree ceased ; and as only one 
room of the house, the one marked /, was standing, and 
that rickety, — I had Susan carried in a chair down the 
hill, to the Hospital; where, in a small paved unlighted 
room, she spent the next twenty-four hours. She was far 
less injured than might have been expected from such a ca- 
tastrophe . 



112 JOHN STERLING. 

' Next day, I liad the passage at the entrance of the 
house repaired and roofed ; and viG returned to the ruins 
of our habitation, still encumbered as they were with the 
wreck of almost all we were possessed of. The walls of the 
part of the house next the sea were carried away, in less I 
think than half an hour after we reached the cellar : when 
I had leisure to examine the remains of the house, I found 
the floor strown with fragments of the building, and with 
broken furniture ; and our books all soaked as completely 
as if they had been for several hours in the sea. 

' In the course of a few days I had the other room, g, 
which is under the same roof "as the one saved, rebuilt; 
and Susan stayed in this temporary abode for a week, — 
when we left Colonarie, and came to Brighton. Mr. Mun- 
ro's kindness exceeds all precedent. We shall certainly 
remain here till my Wife is recovered from her confinement. 
In the meanwhile we shall have a new house built, in which 
we hope to be well settled before^Christmas. 

' The roof was half blown off the kitchen, but I have had 
it mended already ; the other offices were all swept away. 
The gig is much injured ; and my horse received a wound 
in the fall of the stable, from which he will not be recov- 
ered for some weeks : in the meantime I have no choice 
but to buy another, as I must go at least once or t\Yice a 
week to Colonarie, besides business in Town. As to our 
own comforts, we can scarcely expect ever to recover 
from the blow that has now stricken us. No money 
would repay me for the loss of my books, of which a large 
proportion had been in my hands for so many years that 
they were like old and faithful friends, and of which many 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 113 

had been given me at different times by the persons in the 
world whom I most vakie. 

' But against all this I have to set the preservation of 
our lives, in a way the most awfully providential ; and the 
safety of every one on the Estate. And I have also the 
great satisfaction of reflecting that all the Negroes from 
whom any assistance could reasonably be expected, behaved 
like so many Heroes of Antiquity ; risking their lives and 
limbs for us and our property, while their own poor houses 
were flying like chafl" before the hurricane. There are few 
White people here who can say as much for their Black 
dependents ; and the force and value of the relation be- 
tween Master and Slave has been tried by the late calamity 
on a large scale. 

' Great, part of both sides of this Island has been laid 
completely waste. The beautiful wide and fertile Plain 
called the Charib Country, extending for many miles to 
the north of Colonarie, and formerly" containing the finest 
sets of works and best dwelling-houses in the Island, is, I am 
told, completely desolate : on several estates not a roof 
even of a Negro-hut standing. In the embarrassed cir- 
cumstances of many of the proprietors, the ruin is I fear 
irreparable. — At Colonarie the damage is serious, but by 
no means desperate. The crop is perhaps injured ten or 
fifteen per cent. The roofs of several large buildings are 
destroyed, bnt these vre are already supplying ; and the 
injuries done to the cottages of the Negroes are, by this 
time, nearly if not quite remedied. 

' Indeed, all that has been suffered in St. Vincent ap- 
pears nothing when compared with the appalling loss of 
property and of human lives at Barbadoes. There the 
10* 



Ill JOHN STERLING. 

Town is little but a heap of ruins, and the corpses are 
reckoned by thousands ; while throughout the Island there 
are not, I believe, ten estates on which the buildings are 
standing. The Elliotts, from whom we have heard, are 
living with all their family in a tent ; and may think then" 
selves wonderfully saved, when whole families i;ound them 
were crushed at once beneath their houses. Hugh Barton, 
the only officer of the Garrison hurt, has broken his arm, 
and we know nothing of his prospects of recovery. The 
more horrible misfortune of Barbadoes is partly to be ac- 
counted for by the fact of the hurricane having begun 
there during the night. The flatness of the surface in that 
Island presented no obstacle to the Avind, which must, how- 
ever, I think have been in itself more furious than with us. 
No other Island has suffered considerably. 

' I have told both my Uncle and Anthony that I have 
given you the details of our recent history ; — which are not 
so pleasant that I should wish to write them again. Per- 
haps you will be good enough to let them see this, as soon 
as you and my Father can spare it. * * * I am ever, 
dearest Mother, — your grateful and affectionate 

' John Sterling.' 

This Letter, I observe, is dated 28th August, 1831 ; 
which is otherwise a day of mark to the v/orld and me, — 
the Poet Goethe's last birthday. While Sterling sat in 
the Tropical solitudes, penning this history, little European 
"Weimar had its carriages and state-carriages busy on the 
streets, and was astir with compliments and visiting-cards, 
doing its best, as heretofore, on behalf of a remarkable 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 115 

day ; and was not, for centuries or tens of centuries, to see 
tlie like of it again ! — 

At Brighton, the hospitable home of those Munroes, our 
friends continued for above two months. Their first child, 
Edward, as above noticed, was born here, ' 14th October, 
1831 ;' — and now the poor lady, safe from all her various 
perils, could return to Colonarie under good auspices. 

It was in this year that I first heard definitely of Ster- 
ling as a contemporary existence ; and laid up some note 
and outline of him in my memory, as of one whom I might 
yet hope to know. John Mill, Mrs. Austin and perhaps 
other friends, spoke of him with great affection and much 
pitying admiration ; and hoped to see him home again, 
under better omens, from over the seas. As a gifted 
amiable being, of a certain radiant tenuity and velocity, 
too thin and rapid and diffusive, in danger of dissipating 
himself into the vague, or alas into death itself : it was so 
that, like a spot of bright colors, rather than a portrait 
with features, he hung occasionally visible in my imagina- 
tion. 



116 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



A CATASTROPHE. 



The ruin of his house had hardly been repaired, when 
there arrived out of Europe tidings which smote as with a 
still more fatal hurricane on the four corners of his inner 
world, and awoke all the old thunders that lay asleep on 
his horizon there. Tidings, at last of a decisive nature, 
from Gibralter and the Spanish democrat adventure. This 
is what the Newspapers had to report, — the catastrophe at 
once, the details by degrees, — from Spain concerning that 
affair, in the beginning of the new year 1832. 

Torrijos, as we have seen, had hitherto accomplished as 
good as nothing, except disappointment to his impatient 
followers, and sorrow and regret to himself. Poor Torrijos, 
on arriving at Gibraltar with his wild band, and coming 
into contact with the rough fact, had found painfully how 
much his imagination had deceived him. The fact lay 
round him haggard and ironbound ; flatly refusing to be 
handled according to his scheme of ifc. No Spanish sol- 
diery nor citizenry shewed the least disposition to join him ; 
on the contrary the official Spaniards of that coast seemed 
to have the watchfullest eye on all his movements, nay it 
was conjectured they had spies in Gibraltar who gathered 
his very intentions and betrayed them. This small project 
of attack, and then that other, proved futile, or was aban- 
doned before the attempt. Torrijos had to lie painfully 



A CATASTROPHE. IIT 

within the lines of Gibraltar, — ^his poor followers reduced to 
extremitj' of impatience and distress ; the British Gover- 
nor too, though not unfriendly to him, obliged to frown. 
As for the young Cantabs, they, as was said, had wandered 
a httle over the South border of romantic Spain; had 
perhaps seen Seville, Cadiz, with picturesque views, since 
not with belligerent ones ; and their money being done, 
had now returned home. So had it lasted for eighteen 
months. 

The French Three Days breaking out had armed the 
Guerrillero Mina, armed all manner of democratic guer- 
rieros and guerilleros ; and considerable clouds of Invasion, 
from Spanish exiles, hung minatory over the North and 
North-East of Spain, supported by the newborn French 
Democracy, so far as privately possible. These Torrijos 
had to look upon with inexpressible feelings, and take no 
hand in supporting from the South ; these also he had to 
see brushed away, successively abolished by official general- 
ship ; and to sit Avithin his lines, in the painfullest manner, 
unable to do any thing. The fated, gallant-minded, but 
too headlong man. At length the British Governor him- 
self was obliged, in official decency, as is thought on repeat- 
ed remonstrance from his Spanish official neighbors, to sig- 
nify how indecorous, improper and impossible it Avas to 
harbor within one's lines such explosive preparations, once 
they were discovered, against allies in full peace with us, 
— the necessity, in fact, there was for the matter ending. 
It is said, he offered Torrijos and his people passports, and 
British protection, to any country of the world except 
Spain : Torrijos did not accept the passports ; spoke of 
going peaceably to this place or to that ; promised at least, 



118 JOHN STERLING. 

what he saw and felt to be clearly necessary, that he would 
soon leave Gibralter. And he did soon leave it ; he and 
his, Boyd alone of the Englishmen being now with him. 

It was on the last night of November 1831, that they 
all set forth ; Torrijos with Fifty-five companions ; and in 
two small vessels, committed themselves to their night-des- 
perate fortune. No sentry or official person had noticed 
them ; it was from the Spanish Consul, next morning, that 
the British Governor first heard they were gone. The 
British Governor knew nothing of them ; but apparently 
the Spanish officials were much better informed. Spanish 
guardships instantly awake, gave chase to the two small 
vessels, which were making all sail towards Malaga ; and, 
on shore, all manner of troops and detached parties were in 
motion, to render a retreat to Gibraltar by land impossible. 

Crowd all sail for Malaga, then ; there perhaps a regi- 
ment will join us ; there, — or if not, we are but lost ! 
Fancy need not paint a more tragic situation than that of 
Torrijos, the unfortunate gallant man, in the gray of this 
morning, first of December 1831, — his last free morning. 
Noble game is afoot, afoot at last ; and all the hunters 
have him in their toils. — The guardships gain upon Tor- 
rijos ; he cannot even reach Malaga ; has to run ashore at 
a place called Fuengirola, not far from that city ; — the 
guardships seizing his vessels, so soon as he is disembarked. 
The country is all up ; troops scouring the coast every- 
where : no possibility of getting into Malaga with a party 
of Fifty-five. He takes possession of a farmstead (Ingles, 
the place is called) ; barricades himself there, but is 
speedily beleaguered with forces hopelessly superior. He 
demands to treat ; is refused all treaty ; is granted six 



A CATASTROPHE. 119 

hours to consider, shall then either surrender at discretion, 
or be forced to do it. Of course he does it, having no 
alternative ; and enters Malaga a prisoner, all his followers 
prisoners. Here had the Torrijos Enterprise, and all that 
■was embarked upon it, finally arrived. 

Express is sent to Madrid ; express instantly returns : 
" MiUtary execution on the instant ; give them shriving if 
they want it ; that done, fusillade them all." So poor 
Torrijois and his followers, the whole Fifty-six of them, 
Robert Boyd included, meet swift death in Malaga. In 
such manner rushes-down the curtain on them and their 
affair ; they vanish thus on a sudden ; rapt away as in 
black clouds of fate. Poor Boyd, Sterling's cousin, plead- 
ed his British citizenship ; to no purpose : it availed only 
to his dead body, this was delivered to the British Consul 
for interment, and only this. Poor Madam Torrijos, hear- 
ing, at Paris where she now was, of her husband's capture, 
hurries toward Madrid to solicit mercy; whither also mes- 
sengers from Lafayette and the French Government w^ere 
hurrying, on the like errand : at Bayonne, news met the 
poor lady that it was already all over, that she was now a 
widow, and her husband hidden from her forever. Such 
was the handsel of the new year 1832 for Sterling in his 
West-Indian solitudes. 

Sterling's friends never heard of these affairs ; indeed 
we were all secretly warned not to mention the name of 
Torrijos in his hearing, which accordingly remained strictly 
a forbidden subject. His misery over this catastrophe was 
known, in his own family, to have been immense. He 
wrote to liis Brother Anthony : ' I hear the sound of that 



120 JOHN STERLING. 

musketry ; it is as if the bullets were tearing my own 
brain.' To figure in one's sick and excited imagination 
such a scene of fatal man-hunting, lost valor hopelessly 
captured and massacred ; and to add to it, that the victims 
are not men merely, that they are noble and dear forms 
known lately as individual friends : what a Dance of the 
Furies and wild-pealing Dead-march is this, for the mind of 
a loving, generous and vivid man ! Torrijos getting ashore 
at Fuengirola ; Robert Boyd and others ranked to die on 
the esplanade at Malaga — Nay had not Sterling, too, been 
the innocent yet heedless means of Boyd's embarking in 
this enterprise ? By his own kinsman poor Boyd had been 
witlessly guided into the pitfalls. " I hear the sound of 
that musketry ; it is as if the bullets were tearing my own 
brain I" 



PAUSE. 121 



CHAPTEll XIV 



PAUSE. 



These thoughts dwelt long with Sterling ; and for a good 
while, I fancy, kept _ possession of the proscenium of his 
mind ; madlj parading there, to the exclusion of all else, — 
coloring all else with their own black hues. He was young, 
rich in the power to be miserable or otherwise ; and this 
was his first grand sorrow which had now fallen upon him. 

An important spiritual crisis, coming at any rate in some 
form, had hereby suddenly in a very sad form come. No 
doubt, as youth was passing into manhood in these Tropical 
seclusions, and higher wants were awakening in his mind, 
and years and reflection were adding new insight and 
admonition, much in his young way of thought and action 
lay already under ban with him, and repentances enough 
over many things were not wanting. But here on a sudden 
had all repentances, as it were, dashed themselves together 
into one grand whirlwind of repentance ; and his past life 
was fallen wholly as into a state of reprobation. A great 
remorseful misery had come upon him. Suddenly, as with 
a sudden lightning-stroke, it had kindled into conflagration 
all the ruined structure of his past life ; such ruin had to 
blaze and flame round him, in the painfullest manner, till 
it went out in black ashes. His democratic philosophies, 
and mutinous radicalisms, already falling doomed in his 
thoughts, had reached their consummation and final con- 
11 



122 JOHN STERLING. 

demnation here. It was all so rash, imprudent, arrogant, 
all that: false, or but * half-true ; inapplicable •wholly as a 
rule of noble conduct : — and it has ended thus. Wo on it ! 
Another guidance must be found in life, or life is impos- 
sible ! — 

It is evident. Sterling's thoughts had already, since the 
old days of ' the black dragoon,' much modified themselves. 
We perceive that, by mere increase of experience and 
length of time, the opposite and much deeper side of the 
question, which also has its adamantine basis of truth, was 
in turn coming into play ; and in fine that a Philosophy of 
Denial, and world illuminated merely by the flames of 
Destruction, could never have permanently been the rest- 
ing-place of such a man. Those pilgrimings to Coleridge, 
years ago, indicate deeper wants beginning to be felt, and 
important ulterior resolutions becoming inevitable for him. 
If in your own soul there is any tone of the ' Eternal Melo- 
dies,' you cannot live forever in those poor outer, transitory 
grindings and discords ; you will have to struggle inwards 
and upwards, in search of some diviner home for yourself! 
Coleridge's prophetic moonshine, Torrijos's sad tragedy : 
those Avere important occurrences in Sterling's life. But, 
on the whole, there was a big Ocean for him, with impetu- 
ous Gulf-streams, and a doomed voyage in quest of the 
Atlantis, before either of those arose as lights on the hori- 
zon. As important beacon-lights let us count them never- 
theless ; — signal-dates they form to us, at lowest^ We may 
reckon this Torrijos tragedy the crisis of Sterling's history ; 
the turning-point, which modified in the most important 
and by no means wholly in the most favorable manner, all 
the subsequent stages of it. 



PAUSE. 123 

Old Radicalism and mutinous audacious Ethnicisra hav- 
ing thus fallen to wreck, and a mere black world of misery 
and remorse now disclosing itself, whatsoever of natural 
piety to God and man, whatsoever of piety and reverence, 
of awe and devout hope was in Sterling's heart now awoke 
into new activity ; and strove for some due utterance and 
predominance. His letters, in these months, speak of 
earnest religioffs studies and efforts ; of prayer, — of at- 
tempts by prayer and longing endeavor of all kinds, to 
struggle his way into the temple, if temple there were, and 
there find sanctuary.* The realities were grown so hag- 
gard ; life a field of black ashes, if there rose no temple 
any where on it ! Why, like a fated Orestes, is man so 
whipt by the Furies, and driven madly hither and thither, 
if it is not even that he may seek some shrine, and there 
make expiation and find deliverance ? 

In these circumstances, what a scope for Coleridge's 
philosophy, above all ! " If the bottled moonshine he actu- 
ally substance ? Ah, could one but believe in a Church 
while finding it incredible ! What is faith ; what is con- 
viction, credibility, insight ? Can a thing be at once known 
for true, and known for false ? ' Reason,' ' understanding :' 
is there, then, such an internecine war between these two ? 
It was so Coleridge imagined it, the wisest of existing 
men ! " — No, it is not an easy matter (according to Sir 
Kenelm Digby,) this of getting up your ' astral spirit' of a 
thing, and setting it in action, when the thing itself is well 
burnt to ashes. Poor Sterling ; poor sons of Adam in 



* Hare, pp. xliii.-xlvi. 



; 
/ 



124 JOHN STERLING. 

general, in this sad age of cobwebs, worn-out symbolisms, 
reminiscences and simulacra ! Who can tell the struggles 
of poor Sterling, and his pathless wanderings through these 
things ! Long afterwards, in speech with his Brother, he. 
compared his case in this time to that of " a young lady 
who has tragically lost her lover, and is willing to be half- 
hoodwinked into a convent, or in any noble or quasi-noble 
way to escape from a world which has become intolerable." 

During the summer of 1832, I find traces of attempts, 
towards Anti-slavery Philanthropy ; shadows of extensive 
schemes in that direction. Half desperate outlooks, it is 
likely, towards the refuge of Philanthropism, -as a new 
chivalry of life. These took no serious hold of so clear an 
intellect; but they hovered now and afterwards as day- 
dreams, when life otherwise was shorn of aim ; — mirages in 
the desert, which are found not to be lakes Avhen you put 
your bucket into them. One thing was clear, the sojourn 
in St. Vincent was not to last much longer. 

Perhaps one might get some scheme raised into life, in 
Downing Street, for universal Education to the Blacks, 
preparatory to emancipating them ? There were a noble 
work for a man ! Then again poor Mrs. Sterling's health, 
contrary to his own, did not agree with warm moist 
climates. And again &c. &c. These were the outer sur- 
faces of the measure ; the unconscious pretexts under which 
it shewed itself to Sterling and was shewn by him : but the 
inner heart and determining cause of it (as frequently in 
Sterling's life, and in all our lives) was not these. In 
brief, he had had enoudi of St. Vincent. The stranding 



PAUSE. 126 

oppressions of his soul -were too heavy for him there. 
Sohition lay in Europe, or might lie ; not in these remote 
solitudes of the sea, — where no shrine or saint's well is to 
be looked for, no communing of pious pilgrims journeying 
toa:ether towards a shrine. 



11^ 



126 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER XV. 

BONN; HERSTMONCEUX. " 

After a residence of perhaps fifteen months, Sterling 
quitted St^ Vincent, and never returned. He reappeared 
at his Father's house, to the joy of English friends, in 
August 1832 ; well improved in health, and eager for 
English news ; but, beyond vague schemes and possibilities, 
considerably uncertain what was next to be done. 

After no long stay in this scene, — finding Downing 
Street dead as stone to the Slave-Education and to all 
other schemes, — he went across, with his wife and child, 
to Germany ; purposing to make not so much a tour as 
some loose ramble, or desultory residence in that country, 
in the Rhineland first of all. Here was to be hoped the 
picturesque in scenery, which he much aifected ; here the 
new and true in speculation, which he inwardly longed for 
and wanted greatly more ; at all events, here as readily as 
elsewhere might a temporary household be struck up, 
under interesting circumstances. — I conclude he went 
across in the Spring of 1833 ; perhaps directly after 
Arthur Coningshy had got through the press. This Novel, 
which as we have said, was begun two or three years ago, 
probably on his cessation from the Athenceum, and was 
mainly finished, I think, before the removal to St. Vincent, 
had by this time fallen as good as obsolete to his own mind ; 
and its destination now, whether to the press or to the fire, 



BONN ; HERSTMONCEUX. 127 

was in some sort a matter at once of difficulty and of insig- 
nificance to him. At length deciding for the milder alter- 
native, he had thrown in some completing touches here and 
there, — especially, as I conjecture, a proportion of Colerid- 
gean moonshine at the end ; and so sent it forth. 

It was in the sunny days, perhaps in May or June of 
this year, that Ariliur Conmgsby reached my own hand, 
far off amid the heathy wildernesses ; sent by John Mill : 
and I can still recollect the pleasant little episode it made 
in my solitude there. The general impression it left on me, 
which has never since been renewed by a second reading 
in whole or in part, was the certain prefigurement to 
myself, more or less distinct, of an opulent, genial and 
sunny mind, but misdirected, disappointed, experienced in 
misery ; — nay crude and hasty ; mistaking for a solid out- 
come from its woes what was only to me a gilded vacuity. 
The hero an ardent youth, representing Sterling himself, 
plunges into life such as we now have it in these anarchic 
times, with the radical, utilitarian, or mutinous heathen 
theory, which is the readiest for inquiring souls ; finds, by 
various courses of adventure, utter shipwreck in this ; lies 
broken, very wretched : that is the tragic nodus, or apogee 
of his life-course. In this mood of mind, he clutches des- 
perately towards some new method (recognizable as Cole- 
ridge's) of laying hand again on the old Church, which 
has hitherto been extraneous and as if non-extant to his 
way of thought ; makes out, by some Coleridgean legerde- 
main, that there actually is still a Church for him ; that 
this extant Church, which he long took for an extinct 
shadow, is not such, but a substance ; upon which he can 
anchor himself amid the storms of fate ; — and he does so. 



128 JOHN STERLING. 

even taking orders in it, I think. Such could by no means 
seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, 
struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow- 
soul ; who had by no means yet got to land ; but of whom 
much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the deline- 
ations are highly pictorial, jQooded with a deep ruddy 
effulgence ; betokening much wealth, in the crude or the 
ripe state. The hope of perhaps, one day, knowing Ster- 
ling, Avas Avelcome and interesting to me. Arthur Con- 
ingshy^ struggling imperfectly in a sphere high above 
circulating-library novels, gained no notice whatever in that 
quarter ; gained, I suppose in a few scattered heads, some 
such recognition as the above ; and there rested. Sterling 
never mentioned the name of it in my hearing, or would 
hear it mentioned. 

In those very days while Arthur Coningshy was getting 
read amid the Scottish moors, ' in June 1833,' Sterling, 
at Bonn in the Rhine-country, fell in with his old tutor and 
friend, the Reverend Julius Hare ; one with whom he 
always delighted to communicate, especially on such topics 
as then altogether occupied him. A man of cheerful 
serious character, of much approved accomplishment, of 
perfect courtesy ; surely of much piety, in all senses of that 
word. Mr. Hare had quitted his scholastic labors and 
distinctions, some time ago ; the call or opportunity for 
taking orders having come ; and as Rector of Herstmonceux 
in Sussex, a place patrimonially and otherwise endeared to 
him, was about entering, under the best omens, on a new 
course of life. He was now on his return from Rome, and 
a visit of some length to Italy. Such a meeting could not 



BONN ; KERSTMONCEUX. 129 

but be welcome and important to Sterling in such a mood. 
The J had much earnest conversation, freely communing on 
the highest matters ; especially of Sterhng's purpose to 
undertake the clerical profession in which course his rev- 
erend friend could not but bid him good speed. 

It appears,' Sterling already intimated his intention to 
become a "clergyman: He would study theology, bibicali- 
ties, perfect himself in the knowledge seemly or essential 
for his new course ; — read diligently ' for a year or two in 
some good German University,' then seek to obtain orders : 
that was his plan. To which Mr. Hare gave his hearty 
Eage ; adding that if his own curacy happened then to be 
vacant, he should be well pleased to have Sterling in that 
office. So they parted. 

' A year or two ' of serious reflection ' in some good 
German University,' or any where in the world, might have 
thrown much elucidation upon these confused strugglings 
and purposings of Sterling's, and probably have spared 
him some confusion in his subsequent life. But the talent 
of waiting was, of all others, the one he wanted most. 
Impetuous velocity, all-hoping headlong alacrity, what we 
must call rashness and impatience, characterized him in 
most of his important and unimportant procedures ; from 
the purpose to the execution there was usually but one big 
leap with him. A few months after Mr. Hare was gone, 
Sterling wrote that his purposes were a little changed by 
the late meeting at Bonn ; that he now longed to enter the 
Church straightway ; that if the Herstmonceux Curacy 
was still vacant, and the Rector's kind thought towards 
him still held, he would instantly endeavor to qualify 
himself for that office. 



130 JOHN STERLING. 

Answer being in the affirmative on both heads, Sterling 
returned to England ; took orders, — ' ordained deacon at 
Chichester on Trinity Sunday in 1834 ' (he never became 
technically priest) : — and so, having fitted himself and 
family with a reasonable house, in one of those leafy lanes 
in quiet Herstmonceux, on the edge of Pevensy Level, he 
commenced the duties of his Curacy. 

The bereaved young lady has tahen the vail, then ! 
Even so. " Life is growing all so dark and brutal ; must 
be redeemed into human, if it will continue life. Some 
pious heroism, to give a human color to life again, on any 
terms," — even on impossible ones ! 

To such length can transcendental moonshine, cast by 
some morbidly radiating Coleridge into the chaos of a fer- 
menting life, act magically there, and produce divulsions 
and convulsions and diseased developments. So dark and 
abstruse, without lamp or authentic fingerpost, is the 
course of pious genius towards the Eternal Kingdoms 
grown. No fixed highway more ; the old spiritual high- 
ways and recognized paths to the Eternal, now all torn up 
and flung in heaps, submerged in unutterable boiling mud- 
oceans of Hypocrisy and Unbelievability, of brutal living 
Atheism and damnable dead putrescent Cant : surely a 
tragic pilgrimage for all mortals ; Darkness, and the mere 
shadow of Death, enveloping all things from pole to pole ; 
and in the raging gulf-currents, offering us will-o'wisps for 
loadstars, — intimating that there are no stars, nor ever 
were, except certain Old-Jew ones which have now gone 
out. Once more, a tragic pilgrimage for all mortals ; and 
for the young pious soul, winged with genius, and passion- 



BONN; HERSIMONCBUX. 131 

ately seeking land, and passionately abhorrent of floating 
carrion withal, more tragical than for any ! — A pilgrimage 
Ave must all undertake nevertheless, and make the best of 
with our respective means. Some arrive ; a glorious few : 
many must be lost, — go down upon the floating wreck 
which they took for land. Nay, courage ! These also, so 
far as there was any heroism in them, have bequeathed 
their life as a contribution to us, have valiantly laid their 
bodies in the chasm for us : of these also there is no ray of 
heroism lost^ — and, on the whole, what else of them could 
or should be ' saved ' at any time ? Courage, and ever 
Forward ! 

Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanctuary 
in the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem of her 
garment in such manner, there will at present be many 
opinions : and mine must be recorded here in flat reproval 
of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it, as a rash, false, 
unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among the evil lessons 
of his Time to poor Sterling I cannot but account this the 
worst ; properly indeed, as we may say, the apotheosis, the 
solenm apology and consecration, of all the evil lessons that 
were in it to him. Alas, if we did remember the divine 
and awful nature of God's Truth, and had not so forgotten 
it as poor doomed creatures never did before, — should we, 
durst we in our most audacious moments, think of wedding 
it to the world's Untruth, which is also, like all untruths, 
the Devil's ? Only in the world's last lethargy can such 
things be done, and accounted safe and pious ! Fools ! 
" Do you think the Living God is a buzzard idol," sternly 
asks Milton, that you dare address Him in this manner ? 
— Such darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and 



132 JOHN STERLING. 

oblivious baseness, have accumulated on us ; thickening as 
if towards the eternal sleep ! It is not now known, what 
never needed proof or statement before, that Religion is 
not a doubt ; that it is a certainty, — or else a mockery and 
horror. That none or all of the many things we are in 
doubt about, and need to have demonstrated and rendered 
probable, can by any alchemy be made a ' Religion ' for 
us ; but are and must continue a baleful, quiet or unquiet, 
Hypocrisy for us ; and bring — salvation, do we fancy ? 
I think, it is another thing they will bring ; and are, on all 
hands, visibly bringing, this good while ! — 

The Time, then, with its deliriums, has done its worst 
for poor Sterling. Into deeper aberration it cannot lead 
him ; this is the crowning error. Happily, as beseems the 
superlative of errors, it was a very brief, almost a mo- 
mentary one. In June 1834 Sterling dates as installed at 
Ilerstmonceux ; and is flinging, as usual, his whole soul 
into the business ; successfully so far as outward results 
could shew : but already in September, he begins to have 
misgivings ; and in February following, quits it altogether, 
— the rest of his life being, in great part, a laborious effort 
of detail to pick the fragments of it off him, and be free of 
it in soul as well as in title. 

At this the extreme point of spiritual deflexion and de- 
pression, when the world's madness, unusually impressive 
on such a man, has done its very worst with him, and in all 
future errors whatsoever he will be a little less mistaken, 
we may close the First Part of Sterling's Life. 



LIFE OF JOM STERLING. 



PART II 



12 



JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER I 



CURATE. 



By Mr. Hare's account, no priest of any Church could 
more fervently address himself to his functions than 
Sterling now did. He went about among the poor, the 
ignorant, and those that had need of help ; zealously 
forwarded schools and beneficences ; strove, with his whole 
might, to instruct and aid whosoever suffered consciously 
in body, or still worse unconsciously in mind. He had 
charged himself to make the Apostle Paul his model ; the 
perils and voyagings and ultimate martyrdom of Christian 
Paul, in those old ages, on the great scale, were to be 
translated into detail, and become the practical emblem of 
Christian Sterling on the coast of Sussex in this new age. 
' It would be no longer from Jerusalem to Damascus,' 
writes Sterling, ' to Arabia, to Derbe, Lystra, Ephesus, 
that he would travel : but each house of his appointed 
Parish would be to him what each of those great cities was, 
— a place where he would bend his whole being, and spend 
his heart for the conversion, purification, elevation of those 



136 ' JOHN STERLING. 

under his influence. The whole man would be forever at 
work for this purpose ; head, heart, knowledge, time, body, 
possessions, all would be directed to this end. A high 
enoudi model set before one : — how to be realized ! 
Sterling hoped to realize it, to struggle towards realizing 
it, in some small degree. This is Mr. Hare's report of 
him : — 

' He was continually devising some fresh scheme for 
improving the condition of the Parish. His aim was to 
awaken the minds of the people, to arouse their conscience, 
to call forth their sense of moral responsibility, to make 
them feel their own sinfulness, their need of redemption, 
and thus lead them to a recognition of the Divine Love by 
which that redemption is offered to us. ^ In visiting them 
he was diligent in all weathers, to the risk of his own 
health, which was greatly impaired thereby ; and his gen- 
tleness and considerate care for the sick won their affection ; 
so that, though his stay was very short, his name is still, 
after a dozen years, cherished by many.' 

How beautiful would Sterling be in all this ; rushing 
forward like a host towards victory ; playing and pulsing 
like sunshine or soft lightning ; busy at all hours to perform 
his part in abundant and superabundant measure ! ' Of 
that which it was to me personally,' continues Mr. Hare, 
' to have such a fellow-laborer, to live constantly in the 
freest communion with such a friend, I cannot speak. He 
came to me at a time of heavy affliction, just after I had 
heard that the Brother, who had been. the sharer of all my 
thoughts and feelings from childhood, had bid farewell to 
his earthly life at Rome ; and thus he seemed given to me 
to make up in some sort for him whom I had lost. Almost 



CURATE. ■ 137 

daily did I look out for his usual hour of coming to me, and 
watch his tall slender form walking rapidly across the hill 
in front of my window ; with the assurance that he was 
coming to cheer and brighten, to rouse and stir me, to call 
me up to some height of feeling, or down to some depth of 
thought. His lively spirit, responding instantaneously to 
every impulse of Nature and Art ; his generous ardor in 
behalf of whatever js noble and true ; his scorn of all 
meanness, of all false pretences and conventional beliefs, 
softened as it was by compassion for the victims of those 
besetting sins of a cultivated age ; his never-flagging impetu- 
osity in pushing onward to some unattained point of duty or 
of knowledge ; all this, along with his gentle, almost rever- 
ential aifectionateness towards his former tutor, rendered 
my intercourse with him an unspeakable blessing ; and 
time after time has it seemed to me that his visit had been 
like a shower of rain, bringing down freshness and bright- 
ness on a dusty roadside hedge. By him too the recollec- 
tion of these our daily meetings was cherished till the last,'* 
There are many poor people still at Herstmonceux who 
affectionately remember him ; Mr. Hare especially makes 
mention of one good man there, in his young days ' a poor 
cobbler,' and now advanced to a much better position, who 
gratefully ascribes this outward and the other improvements 
in his life to Sterling's generous encouragement and char- 
itable care for him. Such was the curate-life at Herst- 
monceux. So, in those actual leafy lanes, on the edge of 
Pevensy Level, in this new age, did our poor New Paul 
(on best of certain oracles) diligently study to comport 

* Hare, xlviii. liv. Iv. 
12* 



138 JOHN BTERLING. 

himself, — and struggle with all his might not to be a moon- 
shine shadow of the First Paul. 

It was in this summer of 1834, — month of May, shortly 
after arriving in London, — that I first saw Sterling's 
Father. A stout broad gentleman of sixty, perpendicular 
in attitude, rather shewily dressed, and of gracious, inge- 
nious and slightly elaborate manners. It was at Mrs. 
Austin's in Bayswater ; he was just taking leave as I 
entered, so our interview lasted only a moment : but the 
figure of the man, as Sterling's fathci-, had already an 
interest for me, and I remember the time well. Captain 
Edward Sterling, as we formerly called him, had now quite 
drojjt the military title, nobody even of his friends now re- 
membering it ; and was known, according to his wish, in 
political and other circles, as Mr. Sterling, a private gen- 
tleman of some figure. Over Avhom hung, moreover, a 
kind of mysterious nimbus as the principal or one of the 
principal writers in the Times, which gave an interesting 
chiaroscuro to his character in society. A potent, profita- 
ble, but somewhat questionable position ; of which, though 
he affected, and sometimes with anger, altogether to disown 
it, and rigorously insisted on the rights of anonymity, he was 
not unwilling to take the honors too : the private pecuniary 
advantages were very undeniable : and his reception in the 
Clubs, and occasionally in higher quarters, was a good deal 
modeled on the universal belief in it. 

John Sterling at Herstmonceux that afternoon, and his 
Father here in London, would have offered strange con- 
trasts to an eye that had seen them both. Contrasts, and 
yet concordances. They were two very different-looking 



OURATK. USO 

iium, and >Yer0 following t>YO very diftVxvnt modes of 
activity that arternvvn. And yot with a stijuigv family 
likeness, too, both in the men and their uetivitios ; the cen^ 
tral impulse in each, the faeidties applied to ftdtill said i«> 
pulse, not at all dissimilar, — ns grew vl^iMe to nie on 
farther knowledge. 



140 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER II. 



NOT CURATE. 



Thus ifc went on for some months at Herstmonceux ; but 
thus it could not last. We said there were already misgiv- 
ings as to health, &c. in September : * that was but the 
fourth month, for it had began only in June. The like 
clouds of misgiving, flights of dark vapor, chequering more 
and more the bright sky of this promised land, rose heavier 
and rifer mouth after month ; till in February following, 
that is in the eighth month from starting, the sky had 
grown quite overshaded ; and poor Sterling had to think 
practically of departure from his promised land again, find- 
ing that the goal of his pilgrimage v/as not there. Not 
there, wherever it may be ! March again, therefore ; the 
abiding city, and post at which we can live and die, is still 
ahead of us, it would appear ! 

'Ill-health' was the external cause ; and, to all parties 
concerned, to Sterling himself I have no doubt as com- 
pletely as to any, the one determining cause. Nor was the 
ill-health wanting ; it was there in too sad reality. And 
yet properly it w\a3 not there as the burden ; it was there 
as the last ounce which broke the camel's back. I take it, 
in this as in other cases known to me, ill-health was not the 
primary cause but rather the ultimate one, the summing up 

* Hare, p. Ivi. 



NOT CURATE. 141 

of innumerable far deeper conscious and unconscious causes, 
— the cause which could boldly show itself on the surface, 
and give the casting vote. Such was often Sterling's wa}', 
as one could observe in such cases : though the most guile- 
less, undeceptive and transparent of men, he had a notice- 
able, almost childlike faculty of selfdeception, and usually 
substituted for the primary determining motive and set of 
motives, some ultimate ostensible one, and gave that out to 
himself and others as the ruling impulse for important 
changes in life. As is the way with much more ponderous 
and deliberate men ; — as is the way, in a degree, with all 
men ! 

Enough, in February, 1834, Sterling came up to Lon- 
don, to consult with his physicians, — and in fact in all ways 
to consider with himself and friends, — what was to be done 
in regard to this Herstmonceux business. The oracle of 
the physicians, like that of Delphi, was not exceedingly 
determinate : but it did bear, what was a suflBciently unde- 
niable fact, that Sterling's constitution, with a tendency to 
pulmonary ailments, was ill-suited for the office of a 
preacher ; that total abstinence from preaching, for a year 
or two, would clearly be the safer course. To which effect 
he writes to Mr. Hare with a tone of sorrowful agitation ; 
gives up his clerical duties at Herstmonceux ; — and never 
resumed them there or elsewhere. He had been in the 
Church eight months in all : a brief section of his life, but 
an important one, which colored several of his subsequent 
years, and now strangely colors all his years in the memory 
of some. 

This we may account the second grand crisis of his His- 



142 JOHN STERLING. 

tory. Radicalism, not long since, had come to its consum- 
mation, and vanished from him in a tragic manner. " Not 
by Radicalism is the path to Human Nobleness for me !" 
And here now had English Priesthood risen like a sun, 
over the waste ruins and extinct volcanoes of his dead 
Radical world, with promise of new blessedness and healing 
under its wings ; and this too has soon found itself an illu- 
sion : " Not by Priesthood either lies the way, then. 
Once more, where does the way lie !" — To follow illusions 
till they burst and vanish is the lot of all new souls who, 
luckily or lucklessly, are left to their own choice in starting 
on this Earth. The roads are many ; the authentic finger- 
posts are few, — never fewer than in this era, when in so 
many senses the waters are out. Sterling of all men had 
the quickest sense for nobleness, heroism, and the human 
sunimum honuvi; the liveliest headlong spirit of adventure 
and audacity ; few gifted living men less stubbornness of 
perseverance. Illusions, in his chase of the summum 
bonum, were not likely to be wanting ; aberrations, and 
wasteful changes of course, were likely to be many ! It is 
in the history of such vehement, trenchant, far-shining and 
yet intrinsically light and volatile souls, missioned into this 
epoch to seek their way there, that we best see what a con. 
fused epoch it is. 

This clerical aberration, — for such it undoubtedly was in 
Sterling, — we have ascribed to Coleridge ; and do clearly 
think that had there been no Coleridge, neither had this 
been, — nor had English Puseyism or some other strange 
enough universal portents been. Nevertheless, let us say 
farther that it lay partly in the general bearing of the 
M-orld for such a man. This battle, universal in our sad 



NOT CURATE. 143 

epoch, of ' all old things passing away' against ' all things 
becoming new,' has its summary and animating heart in 
that of Radicalism against Church ; there, as in its flamhig 
core, and point of focal splendor, docs the heroic worth 
that lies in each side of the quarrel most clearly disclose 
itself; and Sterling was the man, above many, to recognize 
such' worth on both sides. Natural enough, in such a one, 
that the light of Radicalism having gone out in darkness 
for him, the opposite splendor should next rise as the chief, 
and invite his loyalty till it also failed. In one form or the 
other, such an aberration Avas not unlikely for him. But 
an aberration, especially in this form, we may certainly call 
it. No man of Sterling's veracity, had he clearl}'- con- 
suked his own heart, or had his own hera-t been capable of 
clearly responding, and not been dazzled and bewildered 
by transient fantasies and theosophic moonshine, could 
have undertaken this function. His heart would have 
answered : " No, thou canst not. What is incredible to 
thee, thou shalt not, at thy soul's peril, attempt to believe ? 
Elsewhither for a refuge, or die here. Go to Perdition if 
thou must, — but not with a lie in thy mouth ; by the Eter- 
nal Maker, no !" 

Alas, once more ! How are poor mortals whirled hither 
and thither in the tumultuous chaos of our era ; and, under 
the thick smoke-canopy which has eclipsed all stars, how do 
they fly now after this poor meteor, now after that ! — 
Sterling abandoned his clerical olSce in February 1835 ; 
having held it, and ardently followed it so long as we say, 
— eight calendar months in all. 

It was on this his February expedition to London that I 



144 JOHN STERLING. 

first saw Sterling, — at the India House incidentally, one 
afternoon, where I found him in company with John Mill, 
whom I happened like himself to be visiting for a few min- 
utes. The sight of one whose fine qualities I had often 
heard of lately, was interesting enough ; and, on the whole, 
proved not disappointing, though it "was the translation of 
dream into fact, that is of poetry into prose, and shewed its 
unrhymed side withal. A loose, careless-looking, thin 
figure, in careless dim costume, sat, in a lounging posture, 
carelessly and copiously talking. I was struck with the 
kindly but restless swift-glancing eyes, which looked as if 
the spirits were all out coursing like a pack of merry eager 
beagles, beating every bush. The brow, rather sloping in 
form, was not of imposing character, though again the head 
was longish, which is always the best sign of intellect ; the 
physiognomy in general indicated animation rather than 
strength. 

We talked rapidly of various unraemorable things : I 
remember coming on the Negroes, and noticing that Ster- 
ling's notions on the Slavery Question had not advanced 
into the stage of mine. In reference to the question 
whether an " engagement for life," on just terms, between 
parties who are fixed in the character of master and ser- 
vant, as the Whites and the Negroes are, is not really 
better than one from day to day, — he said with a kindly 
jeer, " I would have the Negroes themselves consulted as 
to that !" — and would not in the least believe that the 
Negroes were by no means final or perfect judges of it. — 
His address, I perceived, was abrupt, unceremonious ; 
probably not at all disinclined to logic, and capable of dash- 
ing in upon you like a charge of cossacks, on occasion : 



NOT CURATE. 146 

but it was also eminently ingenious, social, guileless. We 
did all very well together : and Sterling and I walked 
westward in company, choosing whatever lanes or quietest 
streets there were, as far as Knightsbridge where our roads 
parted ; talking on moralities, theological philosophies ; ar- 
guing copiously, but except in opinion not disagreeing. 

In his notions on such subjects, the expected Coleridge 
cast of thought was very visible ; and he seemed to express 
it even with exaggeration, and in a fearless dogmatic man- 
ner. Identity of sentiment, difference of opinion : these 
are the known elements of a pleasant dialogue. We parted 
Avith the mutual wish to meet again ; — which accordingly, 
at his Father's house and at mine, we soon repeatedly did; 
and already, in the few days before his return to Herst- 
monceux, had laid the foundations of a frank intercourse, 
pointing towards pleasant intimacies both with himself and 
with his circle, which in the future were abundantly fulfill- 
ed. His Mother, essentially and even professedly " Scotch," 
took to my Wife gradually with a most kind maternal re- 
lation; his Father, a gallant shewy stirring gentleman, 
the magus of the Times, had talk and argument ever 
ready, was an interesting figure, and more and more took 
interest in us. We had unconsciously made an acquisition, 
which grew richer and wholesomer with every new year ; 
and ranks now, seen in the pale moonlight of memory, 
and musb ever rank, among the precious possessions of 
fife. 

Sterling's bright ingenuity, and also his audacity, velo- 
city and alacrity, struck me more and more. It was, I 
think, on the occasion of a party given one of these eve- 



146 JOHN STERLING. 

nings at his Father's, -where I remember John Mill, John 
Crawford, Mrs. Crawford, and a number of young and 
elderly figures of distinction, — that a group having formed 
on the younger side of the room, and transcendentalisms 
and theologies forming the topic, a number of deep things 
were said in abrupt conversational style. Sterling in the 
thick of it. For example, one sceptical figure praised the 
Church of England, in Hume's phrase, as ' a Church 
tending to keep down fanaticism,' and recommendable for 
its very indifferency ; whereupon a transcendental figure 
urges him : " you are at"raid of the horse's kicking : but 
will you sacrifice all qualities to being safe from that? 
Then get a* dead horse. None comparable to that for not 
kicking in your stable !" Upon which, a laugh ; with new 
laughs on other the like occasions ; — and at last, in the 
fire of some discussion. Sterling, who was unusually elo- 
quent and animated, broke out with this wild phrase, " I 
could plunge into the bottom of Hell, if I were sure of 
finding the Devil there and getting him strangled !" 
Which produced the loudest laugh of all ; and had to be 
repeated, on Mrs. Crawford's inquiry, to the house at 
large ; and, creating among the elders a kind of silent 
shudder, — though we urged that the feat would really be 
a good investment of human industry, — checked or stopt 
these theologic thunders for the evening. I still remem- 
ber Sterling as in one of his most animated moods that 
evening. He probably returned to Herstmonceux next 
day, where he proposed yet to reside for some indefinite 
time. 

Arrived at Herstmonceux, he had not forgotten us. One 
of his Letters written there soon after was the following, 



NOT CURATE. 147 

which much entertahied me, in various ways. It turns 
on a poor Book of mine, called Sartor Resartus ; which 
was not then even a Book, but was still hanging deso- 
lately under bibliopolic difficulties, now in its fourth or fifth 
year, on the wrong side of the river, as a mere aggregate 
of Magazine Articles ; having at least been slit into that 
form, and lately completed so, and put together into legi" 
bility. I suppose Sterling had borrowed it of me. The 
adventurous hunter spirit which had started such a bemired 
Auerochs, or Uras of the German woods, and decided on 
chasing that as game, struck me not a little ; — and the 
poor Wood-Ox, so bemired in the forests, took it as a com- 
pliment rather : 

* To Thomas Carli/U, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Herstmonceaux near Battle, May 29, 1835. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have now read twice, witli 
care, the wondrous account of Teufelsdrockh and his Opin- 
ions ; and I need not say that it has given me much to think 
of. It falls in with the feelings and tastes which were, for 
years, the ruling ones of my life ; but which you will not 
be angry with me when I say that I am infinitely and 
hourly thankful for having escaped from. Not that I think 
of this state of mind as one with which I have no longer 
any concern. The sense of a oneness of life and power in 
all existence ; and of a boundless exuberance of beauty 
around us, to which most men are well-nigh dead, is a pos- 
session which no one that has ever enjoyed it would wish to 
lose. When to this we add the deep feeling of the differ- 
ence between the actual and the ideal in Nature, and still 



148 JOHN STERLING. 

more in Man ; and bring in, to explain this, the principle 
of duty, as that which connects us with a possible Higher 
State, and sets us in progress towards it, — Ave have a cycle 
of thoughts which was the whole spiritual empire of the 
wisest Pagans, and which might well supply food for the 
wide speculations and richly creative fancy of Teufels- 
drockh, or his prototype Jean Paul. 

'How then comes it, we cannot but ask, that these 
ideas, displayed assuredly with no want of eloquence, viva- 
city or earnestness, have found, unless I am much mista- 
ken, so little acceptance among the best and most energet- 
ic minds in this country ? In a country where millions read 
the Bible, and thousands Shakspeare ; where Wordsworth 
circulates through book-clubs and drawing-rooms ; where 
there are innumerable admirers of your favorite Burns ; 
and where Coleridge, by sending from his solitude the voice 
of earnest spiritual instruction, came to be beloved, studied 
and mourned for, by no small or careless school of disci- 
ples ? — To answer this question would, of course, require 
more thought and knowledge than I can pretend to bring to 
it. But there are some points on which I will venture to 
say a few words. 

' In the first place, as to the form of composition, — 
which may be called, I think, the Rhapsodico-Reflective. 
In this the Sartor Mesartus resembles some of the master- 
works of human invention, which have been acknowledged 
as such by many generations ; and especially the works of 
Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne and Swift. There is nothing 
I know of in Antiquity like it. That which comes nearest 
is perhaps the Platonic Dialogue. But of this, although 
there is something of the playful and fanciful on the sur- 



NOT CURATE. 149 

face, there is in reality neither in the language (which is 
austerely determined to its end,) nor in the method and 
progression of the work, any of that headlong self asserting 
capriciousness, which, if not discernible in . the plan of 
Teufelsdrockh's Memoirs, is yet plainly to be seen in the 
structure of the sentences, the lawless oddity, and strange 
heterogeneous combination and allusion. The principle ot 
this difference, observable often elsewhere in modern litera- 
ture (for the same thing is to be found, more or less, in 
many of our most genial Avorks of imagination, — Don 
Quixote, for instance, and the writings of Jeremy Taylor,) 
seems to be that well-known one of the predominant objec- 
tivity of the Pagan mind ; while among us the subjective 
has risen into superiority, and brought with it in each indi- 
vidual a multitude of peculiar associations and relations. 
These, as not exphcable from any one external principle 
assumed as a premiss by the ancient philosopher, were re. 
jected from the sphere of his aesthetic creation : but to us 
they all have a valu e and meaning ; being connected by 
the bond of our own personality, and all alike existing in 
that infinity which is its arena. 

' But however this may be, and comparing the Teufels- 
drockhean Epopee only with those other modern works, — 
it is noticeable that Rabelais, Montaigne and Sterne have 
trusted for the currency of their writings^ in a great de- 
, gree, to the use of obscene and sensual stimulants. Rab- 
elais, besides, was full of contemporary and personal satire ; 
and seems to have been a champion in the great cause of 
his time, — as was Monta'gae also, — that of the right of 
thought in all competent minds, unrestrained by any out- 
ward authority. Montaigne, moreover, contains more 
13* 



150 JOHN STERLING. 

pleasant and lively gossip, and more distinct good-humored 
painting of bis own character and daily habits than any 
other writer I know. Sterne is never obscure, and never 
moral ; and the costume of his subjects is drawn from the 
familiar experience of his own time and country: and 
Swift, again, has the same merit of the clearest perspicuity, 
joined to that of the most homely, unaffected, forcible Eng- 
lish. These points of difference seem to me the chief ones 
which bear against the success of the Sartor. On the 
other hand, there is in Teufelsdrockh a depth and fervor of 
feeling, and a power of serious eloquence, far beyond that 
of any of these four writers ; and to which indeed there is 
nothing at all comparable in any of them, except perhaps 
now and then, and very imperfectly, in Montaigne. 

' Of the other points of comparison there are two which 
I would chiefly dwell on : and first as to the language. A 
good deal of this is positively barbarous. " Environment," 
" vestural," " stertorous," " visualised," " complected," 
and others to be found I think in the first twenty pages, — 
arc words, so far as I know, without any authority ; some 
of them contrary to analogy ; and none repaying by their 
value the disadvantage of novelty. To these must be 
added new and erroneous locutions : " whole other tissues" 
for all the other ^ and similar uses of the word ivhole ; " ori- 
ents" iox i^earh ; "lucid" and "lucent" emploj-ed as if 
they were different in meaning ; " hulls " perpetually for 
coverings, it being a word hardly used, and then only for 
the husk of a nut ; " to insure a man of misapprehension ;" 
" talented, " a mere newspaper and hustings word, invent- 
ed, I believe, by O'Connell. 

' I must also mention the constant recurrence of some 



NOT CURATE. 151 

"vvords in a quaint and queer connection, Avliich gives a 
grotesque and some^Yllat repulsive mannerism to many sen- 
tences. Of these tlie commonest offender is " quite ;" 
■which appears in ahuost every page, and gives at first a 
droll kind of emphasis ; but soon becomes wearisome. 
" Nay," " manifold," " cunning enough significance," 
" faculty" (meaning a man's rational or moral power'), 
" special," " not witliout," haunt the reader as if in some 
uneasy dream ■which does not rise to the dignity of night- 
mare. Some of these strange mannerisms fall under the 
general head of a singularity peculiar, so far as I know, to 
Teufelsdrockh. For instance, that of the incessant use of 
a sort of odd superfluous qualification of his assertions ; 
which seems to give the character of deliberatcness and 
caution to the style, but in time sounds like mere trick or 
involuntary habit. " Almost " does more than yeoman's, 
almost slave's service in this way. Something similar may 
be remarked of the use of the double negative by way of 
affirmation. -t '-'s v-\ ,, , 

' Under this head, of language, may be mentioned, 
though not with strict grammatical accuracy, two standing 
characteristics of the Professor's style, — at least as render- 
ed into English : First, the composition of words,, such as 
" snow-and-rosebloom maiden :" an attractive damsel doubt- 
less in Germany ; but, with all her charms, somewhat un- 
couth here. " Life-vision" is another example ; and many 
more might be found. To say nothing of the innumerable 
cases in which the words are only intelligible as a com- 
pound term, though not distinguished by hyphens. Of 
course the composition of words is sometimes allowable even 
in English : but the habit of dealing with German seems to 



152 JOHN STERLING. 

have produced, in the pages before us, a prodigious super- 
abundance of this form of expression ; ^Yhich gives harsh- 
ness and strangeness, where the matter would at ail events 
have been surprising enough. Secondly^ I object, with the 
same quahfication, to the frequent use of inversion ; which 
generally appears as a transposition of the two members of 
a clause, in a way which would not have been practiced in 
conversation. It certainly gives emphasis and force, and 
often serves to point the meaning. But a style may be 
fatiguing and faulty precisely by being too emphatic, forci- 
ble and pointed ; and so straining the attention to find its 
meaning, or the admiration to appreciate its beauty. 

* Another class of considerations connects itself with the 
heightened and plethoric fullness of the style : its accumu- 
lation and contrast of imagery ; its occasional jerking and 
almost spasmodic violence ; — and above all, the painful 
subjective excitement, which seems the element and ground- 
work even of every description of Nature ; often taking the 
shape of sarcasm or broad jest, but never subsiding into 
calm. There is also a point which I should think worth at- 
tending to, were I planning any similar book : I mean the 
importance in a work of imagination, of not too much dis- 
turbing in the reader's mind the balance of the New and 
Old. The former addresses itself to his active, the latter 
to his passive faculty ; and these are mutually dependent, 
and must co-exist in certain proportion, if you wish to com- 
bine his sympathy and progressive exertion with willingness 
and ease of attention. This should be taken into account 
in forming a style ; for of course it cannot be consciously 
thought of in composing each sentence. 

' But chiefly it seems important in determining the plan 



NOT CURATE. ^ ' 153 

of a work. If the tone of feeling, the line of speculation 
are out of the common way, and sure to present some diffi- 
culty., to the average reader, then it would probably be 
desirable to select, for the circumstances, drapery and 
accessories of all kinds, those most familiar, or at least 
most attractive. A fable of the homeliest purport, and 
commonest every-day application, derives an interest and 
charm from its turning on the characters and acts of gods 
and genii, lions and foxes, Arabs and Affghauns. On the 
contrary, for philosophic inquiry and truths of awful pre- 
ciousness, I would select as my personages and interlocu- 
tors beings with whose language and " whereabouts " my 
readers would be familiar. Thug did Plato in his Dialogues, 
Christ in his Parables. Therefore it seems doubtful whether 
it was judicious to make a German Professor the hero of 
Sartor. Berkeley began his Siris with tar-water ; but what 
can English readers be expected to make of Criikguk by 
Avay of prelibation to your nectar and tokay ? The circum- 
stances and details do not flash with living reality on the 
minds of your readers, but on the contrary themselves 
require some of that attention and minute speculation, the 
whole original stock of which, in the minds of most of them, 
would not be too much to enable them to follow your views 
of Man and Nature. In short, there is not a sufficient 
basis of the common to justify the amount of peculiarity in 
the work. In a book of science, these considerations 
would of course be inapplicable ; but then the whole shape 
and coloring of the book must be altered to make it such ; 
and a man who wishes merely to get at the philosophical 
result, or summary of the #liole, vvdll regard the details and 
illustrations as so much unprofitable surplusage. 



154 JOHN STERLING. 

' The sense of strangeness is also awakened by the mar- 
velous combinations, in which the work abounds to a degree 
that the common reader must find perfectly bewildering. 
This can hardly, however, be treated as a consequence of 
the style ; for the style in this respect coheres with, and 
springs from, the whole turn and tendency of thought. 
The noblest images are objects of a humorous smile, in a 
mine which sees itself above all Nature and throned in the 
arms of an Almighty Necessity ; while the meanest have a 
dignity, inasmuch as they are trivial symbols of the same 
one life to which the great whole belongs. And hence, as 
I divine, the startling Avhirl of incongruous juxtaposition, 
which of a truth must to many readers seem as amazing as 
if the Pythia on the tripod should have struck up a drink- 
.ing song, or Thersites had caught the prophetic strain of 
Cassandra. 

' All this, of course, appears to me true and relevant ; 
but I cannot help feeling that it is, after all, but a poor 
piece of quackery to comment on a multitude of phenomena 
without adverting to the principle which lies at the root, 
and gives the true meaning to them all. Now this princi- 
ple I seem to myself to find in the state of mind which is 
attributed to Teufelsdrockh ; in his state of mind, I say, 
not in his opinions, though these are, in him as in all men, 
most important, — being one of the best indices to his state 
of mind. Now what distinguishes him, not merely from 
the greatest and best men who have been on earth for 
eighteen hundred years, but from the whole body of those 
who have been working forwarc^ towards the good, and 
have been the salt and light of the world, is this : That he 



NOT CUHATE. 155 

docs not believe in a God. Do not be indignant, I am 
blauiirig no one ; — but if I write my thoughts, I must -wiite 
them honestly. 

' Teufelsdrockh does not belong to the herd of sensual 
and thoughtless men ; because he does perceive in all Ex- 
istence a unity of power ; because he does believe that this 
is a real power external to him and dominant to a certain 
extent over him, and does not think that he is himself a 
shadow in a world of shadows. He has a deep feeling of 
the beautiful, the good and the true ; and a faith in their 
final victory. 

' At the same time, how evident is the strong inward 
nnrest, the Titanic heaving of inountain on mountain ; the 
storm-like rushing over land and sea in search of peace. 
He writhes and roars under his consciousness of the diifer- 
ence in himself between the possible and the actual, the 
hoped-for and the existent. He feels that duty is the 
highest law of his own being ; and knowing how it bids the 
■waves be stilled into an icy fixedness and grandeur, he 
trusts (but with a boundless inward misgiving) that there 
is a principle of order which will reduce all confusion to 
shape and clearness. But wanting peace himself, his fierce 
dissatisfaction fixes on all that is weak, corrupt and imper- 
fect around him ; and instead of a calm and steady coop- 
eration with all those who are endeavoring to apply the 
highest ideas as remedies for the' worst evils, he holds him- 
self aloof in savage isolation ; and cherishes (though he 
dare not own) a stern joy at the prospect of that Catas- 
trophe which is to turn L^osc again the elements of man's 
social life, and give for a time the victory to evil ; — in 
hopes that each new convulsion of the world must bring us 



156 JOHN STERLING. 

nearer to the ultimate restoration of all things ; fancying 
that each may be the last. Wanting the calm and cheerful 
reliance, which Avould be the spring of active exertion, he 
flatters his own distemper by persuading himself that his 
own age and generation are peculiarly feeble and decayed ; 
and would even perhaps be willing to exchange the restless 
immaturity of our self-consciousness, and the promise of its 
long throe-pangs, for the unawakened undoubting simplicity 
of the world's childhood ; of the times in which there Avas 
all the evil and horror of our day, only with the difference 
that conscience had not arisen to try and condemn it. In 
these longings, if they are Teufelsdrockh's, he seems to 
forget that, could we go back five thousand years, we 
should only have the prospect of traveling them again, 
and arriving at last at the same point at which we stand 
now. 

' Something of this state of mind I may say that I under- 
stand ; for I have myself experienced it. And the root of 
the matter appears to me : A want of sympathy with the 
great body of those who are now endeavoring to guide and 
help onward their fellow men. And in what is this aliena- 
tion grounded ? It is, as I believe, simply in the difference 
on that point : viz. the clear, deep, habitual recognition of 
a one Living Personal God, essentially good, wise, true 
and holy, the Author of all that exists ; and a reunion with 
whom is the only end of all rational beings. This belief 
* * * \_There folloiv noiv several pages on ' Personal Qod^ 
and other abstruse or indeed properly unspeakable matters ; 
these, and a general Postscript of qualifying purport, I 
will supipress ; extracting only the following fractions, as 
luminous or slightly significant to us ;] 



NOT CUKATE. 157 

' Now see the difference of Teufelsdrockh's feelings. 
At the end of book iii. chap. 8, I find these Avords : " But 
whence ? Heaven, Avhither ? Sense knows not ; Faith 
knows not ; only that it is through mystery to mystery, 
from God to God. 

' We are such stuff, 
As dreams are made of, aud our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.' " 

' And this talhes with the whole strain of his character. 
What we find everywhere, with an abundant use of the 
name of God, is the conception of a formless Infinite whether 
in time or space ; of a high inscrutable Necessity, which it 
is the chief wisdom and virtue to submit to, which is the 
mysterious impersonal base of all Existence, — shews itself 
in the laws of every separate being's nature ; and for man 
in the shape of duty. On the other hand, I ajQfirm, we do 
know whence we come and whither we go !' — 

* * * ' And in this state of mind, as there is no true 
sympathy with others, just as little is there any true peace 
for ourselves. There is indeed possible the unsympathizing 
factitious calm of Art, which we find in Goethe. But at 
what expense is it bought ? Simply, by abandoning alto- 
gether the idea of duty, which is the great witness of our 
personality. And he attains his inhuman ghastly calmness 
by reducing the Universe to a heap of material for the idea 
of beauty to vrork on.' — 

* * * ' The sum of all I have been writing, as to the 
connection of our faith in God with our feeling towards 
men and our mode of action, may of course be quite erro- 
neous : but granting its truth, it would supply the one 

14 



158 JOHN STERLING. 

principle -which I have been seeking for, in order to explain 
the peculiarities of style in your account of Teufelsdrockh 
and his writings.' * * * i '^Iiq Jifg g^^^^ works of Luther 
are the best comment I know of on this doctrine of mine. 

' Reading over what I have written, I find I have not 
nearly done justice to my own sense of the genius and 
moral energy of the book ; but this is what you will best 
excuse. — Believe me most sincerely and faithfully yours, 

' John Sterling.' 



Here are sufficient points of ' discrepancy with agree- 
ment,' here is material for talk and argument enough ; and 
an expanse of free discussion open, which requires rather to 
be speedily restricted for convenience' sake, than allowed 
to widen itself into the. boundless as it tends to do ! — 

In all Sterling's Letters to myself and others, a large 
collection of which now lies before me, duly copied and 
indexed, there is, to one that knew his speech as well, a 
perhaps unusual likeness between the speech and the 
Letters ; and yet, for the most part, with a great inferiority 
on the part of these. These, thrown off, one and all of 
them, without premeditation, and with most rapid flowing 
per), are naturally as like his speech as writing can well be ; 
this is their grand merit to us : but on the other hand, the 
Avant of the living tones, swift looks and motions, and mani- 
fold dramatic accompaniments, tells heavily, more heavily 
than common. What can be done with champagne itself, 
much more with soda-water, when the gaseous Sj>irit is fled ! 
The reader, in any specimens he may see, must bear this 
in mind. 



NOT CURATE, 159 

Meanwhile these Letters do excel in honesty, in candor 
and transparency ; their very carelessness secures their 
excellence in this respect. And in another much deeper 
and more essential respect I must likewise call them excel- 
lent, — in their childlike goodness, in the purity of heart, 
the noble affection and fidelity they everywhere manifest in 
the writer. This often touchingly strikes a familiar friend 
in reading them ; and will awaken reminiscences (when 
you have the commentary in your own memory) which are 
sad and beautiful, and not without reproach to you on occa- 
sion. To all friends, and all good causes, this man is true ; 
behind their back as before their face, the same man ! — 
Such traits of the autobiographic sort, from these Letters, 
as can serve to paint him or his life, and promise not to 
weary the reader, I must endeavor to select, in the sequel. 



IGO JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER III. 



BAYSWATER. 



Sterling continued to reside at Herstmonceux through 
the spring and summer ; holding by the peaceable retired 
house he still had there, till the vague future might more 
definitely shape itself, and better point out what place of 
abode Avould suit him in his new circumstances. He made 
frequent brief visits to London ; in which I, among other 
friends, frequently saw him, our acquaintance at each visit 
improving in all ways. Like a swift dashing meteor he 
cfftne into our circle ; coruscated among us, for a day or 
two, with sudden pleasant illumination ; then again sud- 
denly withdrew, — we hoped, not for long. 

I suppose, he was full of uncertainties ; but undoubtedly 
was gravitating towards London. Yet, on the whole, on 
the surface of him, you saw no uncertainties ; far from 
that : it seemed always rather with peremptory resolutions, 
and swift express businesses, that he was charged. Sickly 
in body, the testimony said : but here always was a mind 
that gave you the impression of peremptory alertness, 
cheery swift decision, — of a health which you might have 
called exuberant. I remember dialogues with him, of that 
year ; one pleasant dialogue under the trees of the Park 
(where now, in 1851, is the thing called ' Crystal Palace'), 
with the June sunset flinging long shadows for us ; the last 
of the Quality just vanishing for dinner, and the great 



BAYSWATER. 161 

Night beginning to prophesy of itself. Our talk (like that 
of the foregoing Letter) was of the faults of my style, of 
my way of thinking, of ray &c. &c. ; all which admonitions 
and remonstrances, so friendly and innocent, from this 
young junior-senior, I was willing to listen to, though 
unable, as usual, to get almost any practical hold of them. 
As usual the garments do not fit you, you are lost in the 
garments, or you cannot get into them at all ; this is not 
your suit of clothes, it must be another's : — alas, these are 
not your dimensions, these are only the optical angles you 
subtend ; on the whole, you will never get measured in 
that way ! — 

Another time, of date probably very contiguous, I 
remember hearing Sterling preach. It was in some new 
College-chapel in Somerset House (I suppose, what is now 
called Queen's college) ; a very quiet small place, the 
audience student-looking youths, with a few elder people, 
perhaps mostly friends of the preacher's. The discourse, 
delivered with a grave sonorous composure, and far sur- 
passing in talent the usual run of sermons, had withal an • 
air of human veracity as I still recollect, and bespoke dig- 
nity and piety of mind : but gave me the impression rather 
of artistic excellence than of unction or inspiration in that 
kind. Sterling returned with us to Chelsea that day ; 
— and in the afternoon we went on the Thames Putney- 
ward together, we two with my Wife ; under the sunny 
skies, on the quiet water, and with copious cheery talk, the 
remembrance of which is still present enough to me. 

This was properly my only specimen of Sterling's 
preaching. Another time, late in the same autumn, I did 
indeed attend him one evening to some Church in the 
14^ 



162 JOHN STERLING. 

Citj, — a big Church behind Cheapside, " built by Wren " 
as he carefully informed me ; — but there, in my wearied 
mood, the chief subject of reflection was the almost total 
vacancy of the place, and how an eloquent soul was preach- 
ing to mere lamps and "prayer-books : and of the sermon I 
retain no image. It came up in the way of banter, if he 
ever urged the duty of ' Church extension,' which already 
he very seldom did and at length never, what a specimen 
we once had of bright lamps, gilt prayer-books, baize-lined 
pews, Wren-built architecture ; and how, in almost all 
directions, you might have fired a musket through the 
church, and hit no Christian life. A terrible outlook 
indeed for the Apostolic laborer in the brick-and-mortar 
line ! — 

In the Autumn of this same 1835, he removed perma- 
nently to London, whither all summer he had been evidently 
tending ; took a house in Bayswater, an airy suburb, half 
town, half country, near his Father's, and within fair dis- 
tance of his other friends and objects ; and decided to await 
there what the ultimate developments of his course might 
be. His house was in Orme Square, close by the corner 
of that little place (which has only three sides of houses) ; 
its windows looking to the east : the Number was, and I 
believe still is. No. 5. A sufficiently commodious, by no 
means sumptuous, small mansion ; where, with the means 
sure to him, he could calculate on finding adequate shelter 
for his family, his books and himself, and live in a decent 
manner, in no terror of debt, for one thing. His income, I 
suppose, was not large ; but he lived generally a safe dis- 
tance within it ; and shewed himself always as a man 



BAYSWATER. 163 

bountiful in money matters, and taking no thought that 
way. 

His study-room in this house was perhaps mainly the 
drawing-room ; looking out safe, over the little dingy grass- 
plot in front, and the quiet little row of houses opposite, 
with the huge dust-whirl of Oxford Street and London far 
enough ahead of you as back-ground, — as back-curtain, 
blotting out only IiaJf your blue hemisphere with dust and 
smoke. On the right, you had the continuous growl of the 
Uxbridge Road and its wheels, coming as lullaby not inter- 
ruption. Leftward and rearward, after some thin belt of 
houses, lay mere country ; bright sweeping green expanses, 
crowned by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow, with 
their rustic steeples rising against the sky. Here on win- 
ter evenings, the bustle of removal being all well ended, 
and family and books got planted in their new places, 
friends could find Sterling, as they often did, who was 
delighted to be found by them, and would give and take, 
vividly as few others, an hour's good talk at any time. 

His outlooks, it must be admitted, were sufficiently vague 
and overshadowed ; neither the past nor the future of a too 
joyful kind. Public life, in any professional form, is quite 
forbidden ; to work with his fellows any where appears to 
be forbidden : nor can the humblest solitary endeavor to 
work worthily as yet find an arena. How unfold one's 
little bit of talent ; and live, and not lie sleeping, while it is 
called Today ? As Radical, as Reforming Politician in any 
public or private form, — not only has this, in Sterling's 
case, received tragical sentence and execution ; but the op- 
posite extreme, the Church whither he had fled, likewise 
proves abortive : the Church also is not the haven for him 



164 JOnN STERLING. 

at all. What is to be done ? Something must be done, and 
soon, — under, penalties. Whoever has received, on him 
there is an inexorable behest to give, " Fais ton fait, Do 
thy little stroke of work :" this is Nature's voice, and the 
sum of all the commandments, to each man ! 

A shepherd of the people, some small Agamemnon after 
his sort, doing what little sovereignty and guidance he can 
in his day and generation : such every gifted soul longs, 
and should long, to be. But how, in any measure, is the 
small kingdom necessary for Sterling to be attained ? Not 
through newspapers and parliaments, not by rubrics and 
reading-desks : none of the sceptres offered in the world's 
marketplace, nor none of the crosiers there, it sepms, can 
be the shepherd's crook for this man. A most cheerful, 
hoping man ; and full of swift faculty, though much lamed, 
— considerably bewildered too ;" and tending rather towards 
the wastes and solitary places for a home ; the paved world 
not being friendly to him hitherto ! The paved world, in 
fact, both on its practical and spiritual side slams-to its 
doors against him ; indicates that he cannot enter, and even 
must not, — that it will prove a choke-vault, deadly to soul 
and to body, if he enter. Sceptre, crosier, sheepcrook is 
none there for him. 

There remains one other implement, the resource of all 
Adam's posterity that are otherwise foiled, — the Pen. It 
was evident from this point that Sterling, however other- 
wise beaten about, and set fluctuating, would gravitate 
steadily with all his real weight towards Literature. That 
he would gradually try with consciousness to get into Liter- 
ature ; and, on the whole, never quit Literature, which was 



BAYSWATER. 165 

now all the world for him. Such is accordingly the sum of 
his history henceforth : such small sum, so terribly ob- 
structed and diminished by circumstances, is all we have 
realized from him. 

Sterling had by no means as yet consciously quitted the 
clerical profession, far less the Church as a creed. We 
have seen, he occasionally officiated still in these months, 
when a friend requested or an opportunity invited. Nay it 
turned out afterwards, he had, unknown even to his own 
family, during a good many weeks in the coldest period of 
next spring, when it was really dangerous for his health 
and did prove hurtful to it, — been constantly performing the 
morning service in some Chapel in Bayswater, for a young 
clerical neighbor, a slight acquaintance of his, who was 
sickly at the time. So far as I know, this of the Bays- 
water Chapel in the spring of 1836, a feat severely rebuked 
by his Doctor withal, was his last actual service as a church- 
man. But the conscious life ecclesiastical still hung visibly 
about his inner unconscious and real life, for years to come ; 
and not till by slow degrees he had unwinded from him the 
wrappages of it, could he become clear about himself, and 
so much as try heartily what his now sole course was. 
Alas, and he had to live all the rest of his days, as in con- 
tinual flight for his very existence ; ' ducking under like a 
poor unfledged partridge-bird,' as one described it, ' before 
the mower ; darting continually from nook to nook, and 
there crouching, to escape the scythe of Death.' For Lit- 
erature Proper there was but little left in such a life. Only 
the smallest broken fractions of his last and heaviest-laden 
years can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived. 



1G6 JOhN STEELING. 

His purpose had risen before him slowly in noble clearness ; 
clear at last, — and even then the inevitable hour was at 
hand. 

In those first London months, as always afterwards while 
it remained physically possible, I saw much of him ; loved 
him, as was natural, more and more ; found in him, many 
■ways, a beautiful acquisition to my existence here. He 
■was full of bright speech and argument; radiant with 
arrowy vitalities, vivacities and ingenuities. Less than any 
man he gave you the idea of ill-health. Hopeful, sanguine ; 
nay he did not even seem to need definite hope, or much 
to form any ; projecting himself in aerial pulses like an 
aurora borealis, like a summer dawn, and filling all the 
■world with present brightness for himself and others. Ill- 
health ? Nay yOu found at last, it was the very excess of 
life in him that brought on disease. This restless play of 
being, fit to conquer the world, could it have been held and 
guided, could not be held. It had worn lioles in the outer 
case of it, and there found vent for itself, — there, since not 
otherwise. 

In our many promenades and colloquies, ■v\hich were of 
the freest, most copious and pleasant nature, religion often 
formed a topic, and perhaps towards the beginning of our 
intercourse was the prevailing topic. Sterling seemed 
much engrossed in matters theological, and led the conver- 
sation towards such ; talked often about Church, Christi- 
anity Anglican and other, how essential the belief in it to 
man ; then, on the other side, about Pantheism and such 
like : — all in the Coleridge dialect, and with eloquence and 
volubility to all lengths. I remember his insisting often 
and ■with emphasis on what he called a " personal God," 



BAYSWATEE. 



167 



and other high topics, of which it was not always pleasant 
to give account in the argumentative form, in a loud hur- 
ried voice, walking and arguing through the fields or 
streets. Though of warm quick feelings, very positive in 
his opinions, and vehemently eager to convince and conquer 
in such discussions, I seldom or never saw the least anger 
in him against me or any friend. When the blows of con- 
tradiction came too thick, he could with consummate dex- 
terity whisk aside out of their way ; prick into his adversary 
on some new quarter ; or gracefully flourishing his weapon, 
end the duel in some handsome I&anner. One angry 
glance I remember in him, and it was but a glance, and 
gone in a moment. " Flat Pantheism ! " urged he once 
(which he would often enough do about this time), as if 
triumphantly, of something or other, in the fire of a debate, 
in my hearing: ''It is mere Pantheism, that!" — "And 
suppose it were Pot-theism?" cried the other: "If the 
thing is true ! " — Sterling did look hurt at such flippant 
heterodoxy, for a moment. The sotil of his own creed, in 
those days, was far other than this indifference to Pot or 
Pan in such departments of inquiry. 

To me his sentiments for most part were lovable and 
admirable, though in the logical outcome there was every- 
where room for opposition. I admired the temper, the 
longing towards antique heroism, in this young man of the 
nineteenth century ; but saw not how, except in some 
German-English empire of the air, he was ever to realize it 
on those terms. In fact, it became clear to me more and 
more that here was nobleness of heart striving towards all 
nobleness ; here was ardent recognition of the worth of 
Christianity, for one thing ; but no beliet in it at all, in my 



168 JOHN STERLING. 

sense of the word belief, — no belief but one definable as 
mere theoretic moonshine, which would never stand the 
■wind and weather of fact. Nay it struck me farther that 
Sterling's was not intrinsically, nor had ever been in the 
highest or chief degree, a devotional mind. Of course all 
excellence in man, and worship as the supreme excellence, 
■was part of the inheritance of this gifted man : but if called 
to define him, I should say, Artist not Saint was the real 
bent of his being. He had endless admiration, but intrin- 
sically rather a deficiency of reverence in comparison. 
Fear, -with its corollaries, on the religious side, he appeared 
to have none, nor ever to have had any. 

In short, it "was a strange enough symptom to me of the 
bewildered condition of the world, to behold a man of this 
temper, and of this veracity and nobleness, self-consecrated 
here, by free volition and deliberate selection, to be a 
Christian Priest ; and zealously struggling to fancy himself 
such in very truth. Undoubtedly a singular present fact ; 
— from which, as from their point of intersection, great 
perplexities and aberrations in the past, and considerable 
confusions in the future might be seen ominously radiating. 
Happily our friend, as I said, needed little hope. Today 
■with its activities was always bright and rich to him. His 
unmanageable, dislocated, devastated ■vvorld, spiritual or 
economical, lay all illuminated in living sunshine, making it 
almost beautiful to his eyes, and gave him no hypochondria. 
A richer soul, in the "way of natural outfit for felicity, for 
joyful activity in this world, so far as his strength would go, 
was nowiiere to be met with. 

The Letters which Mr. Hare has printed. Letters 



BATSWATEE. 169 

addressed, I imagine, mostly to himself, in this and the 
following ye'ar or two, give record of abundant changeful 
plannings and laborings, on the part of Sterling ; still 
chiefly in the theological department. Translation from 
Tholuck, from Schleiermacher ; treatise on this thing, then 
on that, are on the anvil : it is a life of abstruse vague 
speculations, singularly cheerful and hopeful withal, about 
Will, Morals, Jonathan Edwards, Jewhood, Manhood, and 
of Books to be written on these topics. Part of which 
adventurous vague plans, as the Translation from Tholuck, 
he actually performed ; other greater part, merging always 
into wider undertakings, remained plan merely. I remem- 
ber he talked often about Tholuck, Schleiermacher, and 
others of that stamp ; and looked disappointed, though full 
of good nature, at my obstinate indifference to them and 
their affairs. 

His knowledge of German Literature, very slight at this 
time, Hmited itself altogether to writers on Church matters, 
— Evidences, Counter-Evidences, Theologies and Rumors 
of Theologies ; by the Tholucks, Schleiermachers, Nean- 
ders, and I know not whom. Of the true sovereign souls 
of that Literature, the Goethes, Richters, Schillers, Les- 
sings, he had as good as no knowledge ; and of Goethe in 
particular an obstinate misconception, with proper abhor- 
rence appended, — which did not abate for several years, 
nor quite abolish itself till a very late period. Till, in a 
word, he got Goethe's works fairly read and studied for 
himself ! This was often enough the course with Sterling in 
such cases. He had a most swift glance of recognition for 
the worthy and for the unworthy ; and was prone, in his 
ardent decisive way, to put much faith in it. " Such a one 
15 



170 JOHN STEELING. 

is a worthless idol ; not excellent, only sham-excellent : " 
here, on this negative side especially, you often had to ad- 
mire how right he was; — often, but not quite always. And 
he -would maintain, with endless iLgenuity, confidence and 
persistence, his fallacious spectrum to be a real image. 
However, it Avas sure to come all right in the end. 
Whatever real excellence he might misknow, you had but 
to let it stand before him, soliciting new examination from 
him : none surer than he to recognize it at last, and to pay 
it all his dues, with the arrears and interest on them. 
Goethe, who figures as some absurd high-stalking hollow 
playactor, or empty ornamental clockcase of an ' Artist ' 
so-called, in the Tale of the Onyx Ring, was in the throne 
of Sterling's intellectual world before all was done ; and 
the theory of ' Goethe's want of feeling,' want of &c. &c., 
appeared to him also abundantly contemptible and for- 
getable. 

Sterling's days, during this time as always, were full of 
occupation, cheerfully interesting to himself and others ; 
though, the wrecks of theology so encumbering him, little 
fruit on the positive side could come of these labors. On 
the negative side they were productive ; and there also, so 
much of encumbrance requiring removal, before fruit could 
grow, there was plenty of labor needed. He looked happy 
as well as busy : roamed extensively among his friends, and 
loved to have them about him, — chiefly old Cambridge 
comrades now settling into occupations in the world ; — and 
Was felt by all friends, by myself as by few, to be a wel- 
come illumination in the dim whirl of things. A man of 
altogether social and human waj'S ; his address everywhere 
pleasant and enlivening. A certain smile of thin but 



BAYSWATER. 171 

genuine laughter, we might say, hung gracefully over all 
he said and 'did ; — expressing gracefully, according to the 
model of this epoch, the" stoical pococurantism which is 
required of the cultivated Englishman. Such laughter in 
him was not deep, but neither was it false (as lamentably 
happens often) ; and the cheerfulness it went to symbolize 
was hearty and beautiful, — visible in the silent wjisymbollzed 
state in a still gracefuller fashion. 

Of wit, so far as rapid hvely intellect produces wit, he 
had plenty, and did not abuse his endowment that way, 
being always fundamentally serious in the purport of his 
speech : of what we call humor he had some, though little ; 
nay of real sens^ for the ludicrous, in any form, he had not 
much for a man of his vivacity ; and you remarked that his 
laugh was limited in compass, and of a clear but not rich 
quality. To the like effect shone something, a kind of 
childlike half-embarrassed shimmer of expression, on his fine 
vivid countenance ; curiously mingling with its ardors and 
audacities. A beautiful childHke soul ! He was naturally 
a favorite in conversation, especially with all who had any 
funds for conversing : frank and direct, yet polite and deli- 
cate withal, — though at times toO/Jie could crackle with his 
"dexterous petulancies, making the air all like needles round 
you ; and there was no end to his logic Vt'hen you excited 
it ; no end, unless in some form of silence on your part. 
Elderly men of reputation I have sometimes known offended 
by him ; for he took a frank way in the matter of talk ; 
spoke freely out of him, freely listening to what others 
spoke, with a kind of " hail fellow well met " feeling ; and 
carelessly measured a man much less by his reputed account 
in the bank of wit, or in any other bank, than by what the 



172 JOHN STERLING. 

man had to shew for himself in the shape of real spiritual 
cash on the occasion. But withal there was ever a fine 
element of natural courtesy in Sterling ; his deliberate de- 
meanor to acknowledged superiors was fine and graceful ; 
his apologies and the like, when in a fit of repentance he 
felt commanded to apologize, were full of naivety, and very 
pretty and ingenuous. 

His circle of friends was wide enough ; chiefly men of 
his own standing, old College friends many of them ; some 
of whom have now become universally known. Among 
whom the most important to him was Frederic Maurice, 
who ha^ not long before removed to the Chaplaincy of 
Guy's Hospital here, and was still, as he had long been, his 
intimate and counselor. Their views and articulate opin- 
ions, I suppose, were now fast beginning to diverge ; and 
these went on diverging far enough : but in their kindly 
union, in their perfect trustful familiarity, precious to both 
parties, there never was the least break, but t steady, 
equable and duly increasing current to the end. One of 
Sterhng's commonest expeditions, in this time, was a sally 
to the other side of London Bridge : " Going to Guy's to- 
day." Maurice, in a year or two, became Sterling's 
brother-in-law ; wedded Mrs. Sterling's younger sister, — a 
gentle excellent female soul ; by whom the relation was, in 
many ways, strengthened and beautified for Sterling and 
all friends of the parties. With the Literary notabilities I 
think he had no acquaintance ; his thoughts indeed still 
tended rather towards a certain class of the Clerical ; but 
neither had he much to do with these ; for he was at no 
time the least of a tufthunter, but rather had a marked 
natural indifference to tufts. 



BAYSWATER. 173 

The Rev. Mr. Dunn, a venerable and amiable Irish gen- 
tleman, ' distmgulshecl,' we were told, ' by having refused 
a bishopric ; ' and who was now living, in an opulent enough 
retirement, amid his books and philosophies and friends, in 
London, — is memorable to me among this clerical class :' 
one of the mildest, beautifullest old men I have ever seen, 
— " like Fenelon," Sterling said : his very face, with its 
kind true smile, with its look of suffering cheerfulness and 
pious wisdom, was a sort of benediction. It is of him that 
Sterling writes, in. the Extract which Mr. Hare, modestly 
reducing the name to an initial ' Mr. D.,' has giv^en us : * 
' Mr. Dunn, for instance ; the defect of whose Theology, 
compounded as it is of the doctrine of the Greek Fathers, 
of the Mystics and of Ethical Philosophers, consists, — if I 
may hint a fault in one whose holiness, meekness and fervor 
would have made him the beloved disciple of him whom 
Jesus loved, — in an insufficient apprehension of the reality 
and depth of Sin.' A characteristic ' defect ' of this fine 
gentle soul. On Mr. Dunn's death, which occurred two 
or three years later, Sterling gave, in some vailed yet 
transparent form, in Blachwood' s Magazine^ an affectionate 
and eloquent notice of him ; which, stript of the vail, was 
excerpted into the Newspapers also.f 

Of Coleridge there was little said. Coleridge was now 
dead, not long since ; nor was his name henceforth-much 
heard in Sterling's circle ; though on occasion, for a year 
or two to come, he would still assert his transcendent admi- 
ration, especially if Maurice were by to help. But he was 
getting into German, into various inquiries and sources of 

* P. Ixxviii. r Given in Hare (ii. 188—193). 

15* 



171 



l(»IIN STICIM.INO. 



kii(>\vl(Ml,L'o lunv io liiiii, luid ]\h iidinlniiloiiH and notions on JU 
iimiiy Iliiii;'/! wdi'd nilciilly itiid I'lipidly iiiodiiyni;^ tliom- " 

Si> junid iiitrrcMliiiy; liiiucui rcaJiricM, and widd (doud- 
<iiiM(>|ti(V4 ol" iiiicdrl.'uii H|»('('uhili(>ii, wliicli also had llioii* 
iiil(^i'(n4lM and Mn^ir rainbow colorii io liini, and could noL luil 
in liiM life jiuil, now, did Slrrlin"; pass Iiin year and half at 
|{a.yH\Ya.i(M\ Such vaporous HpoouhitionH woro inovitablo 
("or hiui at, pniHcnl. ; hut it \YnH to ho hoped tlioy would 
Huhsi(h> hy and hy, and \v;\.\o th(> sky cloar. All UiIk was 
hilt the pi'diiuinary (o wlialtwcr work mi'dit Wo iii him :— ■ 
and, alas, nuich othrr iulcn iiption lay hrtwccu him and 
that. 



TO iiouMiatix. ITf) 



CHAPTER IV. 



TO ItOllUlOAUX. 



AmoN(I tho quotulam C;unbrul.;:;o acciuaiutanoes I liavo 
soou with iStorling about this liiuo, ouo struck mo, loss 
fi'om his qualities than from his iiamo and genealogy : 
b'niiik i'i(l,i;(> worth, youngest Hon of tho \voll-known LowoU 
l*Al,ii;('\Yortli, youn_L:;(>jd brother of tlio colobratod Maria I'Mgo- 
^vorth, tho Irish JSovolist. l*'rank was a sliort noat mati ; 
of slook, S(|uaro, colorless faco (rosombliiii!; tho I'ortrails 
ol" his Falhor), with small bluo eyes in Aviiich twinkled 
curiously a joyless smilo ; his voico was croaky and shnll, 
Avith a tone of shrewish obstinacy in it, and perhaps of 
sarcasm Avithal. A composed, dogmatic, speculative, exact, 
and not melodious man. llo was learned in IMato and 
likowiso in Kant ; w<*ll-read in philosophies and litora- 
hires ; entertained not creeds, but tl\(^ IMatonio or Kati- 
tean (//iosIh of creeds ; coldly sneering away from him, 
in the joyless twinkle of those oyos, in the incxorablo 
jinglo of that shrill voice, all manner of Toryisms, super- 
stitions : for tho rest, a man of iierfcct voracity, of great 
diligence, and other Avorth ; — notable to soo alongside of 
Sterling. 

lie is the ' !<].' <|uoted by Mr. llaro from one of Ster- 
ling's letters ; — and T Avill incidi'ntally confess that tho 
discreet ' J3.' of the next leaf in that Volume, must, if 
need bo, convert himself into * C.,' my rocogni:Aablo Bolf 



176 JOHN STERLING. 

namely. Sterling has written there : ' I find in all my 
conversations with Carlyle that his fundamental position is, 
the good of evil : he is forever quoting Goethe's Epigram 
about the idleness of wishing to jump off one's own shadow.' 
— Even so : 

Was lehr ' ich dich vor alien Dingen 1 — 

Konnlest mich hhren von meiner Schatle zu springen! 

— indicating conversations on the Origin of Evil, or rather 
resolution on my part to suppress such, as wholly fruitless 
and worthless ; which are now all grown dark to me ! 
The passage about Frank is as follows, — likewise eluci- 
dative of Sterling and his cloud-compellings, and duels 
with the shadows, about this time : 

' Edgeworth seems to me not to have yet gone be- 
yond a mere notional life. It is manifest that he has no 
knowledge of the necessity of a progress from Wissen 
to Wesen ' (say Knoiving to Being^ ; ' and one is there- 
fore not surprised that he should think Kant a sufficient 
hierarch. I know very little of Kant's doctrine ; but I 
made out from Edgeworth what seems to me a funda- 
mental unsoundness in his moral scheme: namely the 
assertion of the certainty of a heavenly Futurity for man, 
because the idea of duty involves that pf merit or reward. 
Now duty seems rather to exclude merit; and at all 
events, the notion of external reward is a mere empirical 
appendage, and has none but an arbitrary connection with 
ethics. I regard it as a very happy thing for Edgeworth 
that he has come to England. In Italy he probably would 
never have gained any intuition into the reality of Being 
as different from a m.ere power of Speculating and Per- 



TO BORDEAUX. 177 

ceiving ; and of course without this, he can never reach to 
more than the merest Gnosis ; which taken alone is a poor 
inheritance, a box of title-deeds to-an estate which is cov- 
ered with lava, or sunk under the sea.' * 

This good little Edgeworth had roved extensively about 
the Continent ; had married a young Spanish wife, whom 
by a romantic accident he came upon in London : having 
really good scholarship, and consciousness of faculty and 
fidelity, he now hoped to find support in preparing young 
men for the University, in taking pupils to board ; and 
with this view, was endeavoring to form an establishment 
somewhere in the environs ; — ignorant that it is mainly 
the Clergy whom simple persons trust with that trade at 
present ; that his want of a patent of orthodoxy, not to 
say his inexorable secret heterodoxy of mind, would far 
override all other qualifications in the estimate of simple 
persons, who are afraid of many things, and not afraid of 
hypocrisy which is the worst and one irremediably bad 
thing. Poor Edgeworth tried this business for a while, 
but found no success at all ; went across, after a year or 
two, to native Edgeworthstown, in Longford, to take the 
management of his brother's estate ; in which function it 
was said he shone, and had quite given up philosophies 
and speculations, and become a taciturn grim landmanager 
and county magistrate, likely to do much good in that 
department ; when we learned next that he was dead, 
that we should see him no more. The good little Frank ! 

. One day in the spring of 1836, I can still recollect, 

* Hare, pp. Ixxiv. Ixxii. 



178 



JOHN STERLING. 



Sterling had proposed to me, bj way of wide ramble, 
useful for various ends, that I should walk with him to 
Elthara and back, to see this Edge worth, whom I tilso 
knew a little. We went accordingly together; Avalking 
rapidly, as was Sterling's wont, and no doubt talking 
extensively. It probably was in the end of February : 
I can remember leafless hedges, gray driving clouds ; — 
procession of boarding-school girls in some quiet part of 
the route. I very well remember the big Edgeworth 
house at Eltham ; the big old Palace now a barn;— in 
general, that the day was full of action: and likewise 
that rain came upon us in our return, and that the closing 
phasis was a march along Piccadilly, still full of talk, but 
now under decided wet, and in altogether muddy circum- 
stances. This was the last walk that poor Sterling took, 
for a great many months. 

He had been ailing for some time, little known to me, 
and too disregardful himself of minatory symptoms, as 
his wont was, so long as strength remained ; and this rainy 
walk of ours had now brought the matter to a crisis. He 
was shut up from all visitors Avhatsoever ; the doctors and 
his family in great alarm about him, he himself coldly 
professing that death at no great distance was very likely. 
So it lasted for a long anxious while. I remember tender 
messages to and from him ; loan of books, particularly 
some of Goethe's which he then read, — still without 
recognition of much worth in them. At length some 
select friends were occasionally admitted ; signs of im- 
provement began to appear ;— and in the bright twilight, 
Kensington Gardens were green, and sky and earth were 
hopeful, as one went to make inquiry. The summer bril- 



TO BORDEAUX. 179 

liancy was abroad over the world before we fairly saw 
Sterling again sub dio. Here was a fatal hand on the 
wall ; checking tragically whatsoever wide-drawn schemes 
might be maturing themselves in such a life; sternly 
admonitory that all schemes must be narrow, and admitted 
problematic. 

Sterling, by the doctor's order, took to daily riding in 
summer ; scouring far and wide on a swift strong horse, 
and was allowed no other exercise ; so that my walks with 
him had, to my sorrow, ended. We saw him otherwise 
pretty often ; but it was only for moments in comparison. 
His life, at any rate, in these circumstances was naturally 
devoid of composure. The little Bayswater establish- 
ment, with all its schemes of peaceable activity on the 
small or on the great scale, was evidently set adrift ; the 
anchor lifted, and Sterling and his family again at sea, 
for farther uncertain voyaging. Here is not thy rest ; not 
here : — where then ! The question. What to do even for 
next autumn ? had become the pressing one. 

A rich Bordeaux merchant, an Uncle of his Wife's, of 
the name of Mr. Johnston, possessed a sumptuous mansion 
and grounds, which he did not occupy, in the environs of 
that southern City : it was judged that the climate might 
be favorable ; to the house and its copious accommodation 
there was welcome ingress, if Sterling chose to occupy it. 
Servants were not needed, servants and conveniences 
enough, in the big solitary mansion with its marble ter- 
races, were already there. Conveniences enough within, 
and curiosities without. It is the ' South of France,' 
with its Gascon ways ; the Garonne, Garumna river, the 
Gironde and Montaigne's country : here truly are invi- 
tations. 



180 JOHN STERLING. 

In short it was decided that he and his family should 
move thither; there, under warmer skies, begin a new 
residence. The doctors promised improvement, if the 
place suited for a permanency ; there at least, much more 
commodiously than elsewhere, he might put over the rig- 
orous period of this present year. Sterling left us, I find 
noted, ' on the first of August 1836.' The name of his 
fine foreign mansion is Belsito ; in the village of Floirac, 
within short distance of Bordeaux. 

Counting in his voyage to the West Indies, this is the 
second of some five health-journeys which, sometimes with 
his family, sometimes without, he had to make in all. 
' Five forced peregrinities ; ' which, in their sad and 
barren alternation, are the main incidents of his much- 
obstructed life henceforth. Five swift flights, not for any 
high or low object in hfe, but for life itself; swift jerkings 
aside from whatever path or object you might be following, 
to escape the scythe of Death. On such terms had poor 
Sterling henceforth to live ; and surely with less com- 
plaint, with whatever result otherwise, no man could do it. 

His health prospered at Bordeaux. He had, of course, 
new interests and objects of curiosity ; but when once the 
household was settled in its new moorings, and the first 
dazzle of strangeness fairly over, he returned to his em- 
ployments and pursuits, — which were, in good part, essen- 
tially the old ones. His chosen books, favorite instructors 
of the period, were with him ; at least the world of his 
own thoughts was with him, and the grand ever-recurring 
question : What to do with that ; How best to regulate 
that. 



TO BORDEAUX. 181 

I remember kind .and happy-looking Letters from him 
at Bordeaux, rich enough in interests and projects, in 
activities and emotions. He looked abroad over the Gi 
ronde country, over the towers and quais of Bordeaux at 
least with a painter's eye, which he rather eminently 
had, and very eminently loved to exercise. Of human ac- 
quaintances he found not many to attract him, nor could 
he well go much into deeper than pictorial connection with 
the scene around him ; but on this side too, he was, as 
usual, open and willing. A learned young German, tutor 
in some family of the neighborhood, was admitted fre- 
quently to see him ; probably the only scholar in those 
parts with whom he could converse of an evening. One 
of my Letters contained notice of a pilgrimage he had 
made to the old Chateau of Montaigne ; a highly inter- 
esting sight to a reading man. He wrote to me also About 
the Caves of St. Emilion or Libourne, hiding-place of Bar- 
baroux, Petion and other Girondins, concerning whom I 
was then writing. Nay here is the Letter itself still left ; 
and I may as well insert it, as a relic of that time. The 
projected ' walking expedition ' into France ; the vision of 
]Montaigne's old House, Barbaroux's death scene ; the 
Chinese la-Kiao-Li or Two Fair Cousins: all these 
things are long since asleep), as if dead ; and affect one's 
own mind with a sense of strangeness when resuscitated : 

' To Thomas Carlyle, Usq., Chelsea, London. 

' Belsito, Deal- Bordeaux, October 26, 1836. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have to thank you for two 
Letters, which, unlike other people's, have the writer's 
IG 



182 JOHN STERLING. 

signature in every word as well as at the end. Your 
assurances of remembrance and kindness were by no 
means necessary, but are not at all less pleasant. The 
patronage you bestow on my old stick requires the ac- 
knowledgment from me which my care of its education had 
not succeeded in teaching it to express for itself. May 
your more genial and more masculine treatment be more 
effectual ! I remember that I used to fling it along the 
broad walk in Kensington Gardens, for Edward to run 
after it ; and I suspect you will find the scars resulting 
from the process, on the top of the hook. 

' If the purveyors of religion and its implements to this 
department of France supplied such commodities as waxen 
hecatombs, I would sacrifice one for the accomplishment of 
your pedestrian design ; and am already meditating an 
appropriate invocation, sermone pedestri. Pray come, in 
the first fine days of spring ; or rather let us look forward 
to your coming, for as to the fact, where may both or 
either of us be before this day six months? I am not, 
however, resolute as to any plan of my own that would 
take me either along the finite or the infinite sea. I still 
bear up, and do ray best here ; and have no distinct 
schemes of departure : for I am well, and well situated at 
present, and enjoy my books, my leisure, and the size and 
comfort of the house I live in. I shall go, if go I must ; 
and not otherwise. I have sometimes thought that, if 
driven away later in the year, I might try Italy, — proba- 
bly at first Pisa ; and if so, should hope, in spite of cholera, 
to see your Brother, who would be helpful both to mind 
and body. When you write to him, pray just touch with 



TO BORDEAUX. 183 

your pen the long cobweb thread that connects me -with 
him, and which is more visible and palpable about eighteen 
inches above your writing-table than any where else in this 
much becobwebbed world. 

Your account of the particular net you occupy in the 
great reticulation is not very consolatory ; — I should be 
sorry if it were from thinking of it as a sort of paries 
proximus. When you slip the collar of the French Revo- 
lution, and the fine weather comes round again, and my 
life becomes insurable at less than fifty per cent, I hope to 
see you as merry as Philina or her husband, in spite of 
your having somewhat more wisdom. And all these good 
things may be, in some twenty-six weeks or less ; a space 
of time for which the paltriest Dutch clock would be 
warranted to go, without more than an hour or two of daily 
variation. I trust we have, both of us, souls above those 
that tick in country kitchens ! — Of your Wife I think you 
say nothing in your last. Why does she not write to me ? 
Is it because she will not stoop to nonsense, and that would 
be the only proper answer to an uncanonical epistle I sent 
her while in Scotland ? Tell her she is, at all events, sure 
of being constantly reme mbered ; for I play backgammon 
with Charles Barton for ivant of any one to play chess 
with. 

' Of my expedition to Montaigne's old House I cannot 
say much : for I indited Notes thereof for my own use, and 
also wrote something about it to Mr, Dunn ; which is as 
much as the old walls would well bear. It is truly an 
interesting place ; for it does not seem as if a stone had 



184 JOHN STEELING. 

been touched since Montaigne's time ; -though his house is 
still inhabited, and the apartment that he describes in the 
Essai cles Trois Commerces might, barring the evident 
antiquity, have been built yesterday to realize his account. 
The rafters of the room which was his library have still his 
inscriptions on their lower faces : all very characteristic ; 
many from Ecdesiastes. The view is open all round ; 
over a rather flat, elevated country, apparently clayey 
ploughed lands, with little wood, no look of great popula- 
tion, and [here and there a small stone windmill with a 
conical roof. The village church close by is much older 
than Montaigne's day. His house looks just as he de- 
scribes it : a considerable building that never was at all 
fortified. 

' St. Emilion I had not time to see or learn much of; 
but the place looks all very old. A very small town, built 
of stone ; jostled into a sort of ravine, or large quarry, in 
the slope from the higher table-land towards the Dordogne. 
Quite on the ridge, at the top of the town, is an immense 
Gothic steeple, that would suit a cathedral, but has under 
it only a church (now abandoned) cut out in the sandstone 
rock, and of great heiglit and size. There is a large 
church above ground close by, and several monastic build- 
ings. Of the Caves I only saw some entrances. I fancy 
they are all artificial, but am not sure. The Dordogne is 
in sight below in the plain. I cannot lay my hands on any 
Book for you which gives an account of the time the Giron- 
dins spent here ; or who precisely those were that made 
this their hiding-place. 

' I was prepared for what you say of Mlraheau and its 
postponement, from an advertisement of the Articles, in 



TO BORDEAUX. 185 

the Times : — but this I only saw the day after I had 
written to Paris to order the new Number ' of the London- 
and- Westminster ' by mail ; so I consider the Editor in my 
debt for ten or twelve francs of postage, which I hope to 
recover when we get our equitable adjustment of all things 
in this world. 

* I have now read through Saint Simon's twenty vol- 
umes ; which have well repaid me. The picture of the 
daily detail of a despotic court is something quite startling 
from its vividness and reality ; and there is perhaps a 
much deeper interest in his innumerable portraits and 
biographies, — many of which, told in the quietest way, are 
appalHng tragedies ; and the best, I think, have something 
painful and delirious about them. I have also lounged a 
good deal over the Biograplue Universelle and Bayle. 
The last I ne'ver looked into before. One would think he 
had spent his whole life in the Younger Phny's windowless 
study ; had never seen, except by candlelight; and thought 
the Universe a very good raw-material for books. But he 
is an amiable honest man ; and more good material than 
enough was spent in making the case for that logical wheel- 
work of his. As to the BiograpJiie Universelle, you know 
it better than I. I wish Craik, or some such man, could 
be employed on an English edition, in which the British 
lives should be better done. I sent for the Chinese 
Cousins as soon as I received your Letter ; but the answer 
was, that the book is out of print. 

' Have you seen the last Number of the Foreign He- 
view ; where there is an article on Eckermann's Conver- 
sations of Croethe, written by a stupid man, but giving 
extracts of much interest. Goethe's talk has been running 
16* 



186 JOHN STERLINQ. 

in my head for the last fortnight ; and I find I am more 
inclined than I "was to value the flowers that grow (as on 
the Alps) on the margin of his glaciers. I shall read his 
Biclitung unci Wahrheit, and Italian Tour, when the books 
come in my way. But I have still little hope of finding in 
him what I should look for in Jean Paul, and what I pos- 
sess in some others : a ground prolonging and encircling 
that on which I myself rest. 

' I suppose the dramatic projects of Henry Taylor (to 
whom remember me cordially) are mainly Thomas d 
BecJcet. I too have been scheming Tragedies and Novels ; 
— but with little notion of doing more than play the cloud- 
compeller, for want of more substantial work on earth. I 
do not know why, but my thoughts have, since I reached 
this, been running more on Ilistory and Poetry than on 
Theology and Philosophy, more indeed than for years past. 
I suppose it is a providential arrangement, that I may find 
out I am good for as little in the one way as the other. In 
the meantime do not let my monopoly of your correspond- 
ence be only a nominal privilege. Accept my Wife's 
kindest remembrances ; give my love to yours. Tell me if 
I can do any thing for you. Do not let the ides of ]\Iarch 
go by without starting for the Garonne.: — and believe me, 
— Yours jusqii'd la mort sans ph-ase, 

' John Sterling.' 

* 

" La mort sans pJirase " was Sieyes's vote in the Trial 
of Louis. Sterling's ' Notes for his own use,' which are 
here mentioned in reference to that Montaigne pilgrimage 
of his, were em.ployed not long after, in an Essay on Mon- 



TO BORDEAUX. 187 

taigne.* He also read the Ohinese Cousins, and loved it, 
— as I had expected. Of whidi take this memorandum : 
' lu-Kiao-Li, ou les Deux Cousines ; translated by Remu- 
sat ; — >Yell translated into English also, from his version ; 
and one of the notablest Chinese books. A book in fact 
by a Chinese 7nan of genius ; most strangely but recogni- 
zably such, — man of genius made on the dragon pattern ! 
Recommended to be by Carlyle ; to him by Leigh Hunt.' 
The other points need no explanation. 

By this time, I conclude, as indeed this Letter indicates, 
the theological tumult was decidedly abating in him ; to 
which result this still hermit-life in the Gironde would un- 
doubtedly contribute. Tholuck, Schleiermacher, and the 
war of articles and rubrics, were left in the far distance ; 
Nature's blue skies, and awful eternal verities, were once 
more around one, and small still voices, admonitory of 
many things, could in the beautiful solitude freely reach 
the heart. Theologies, rubrics, surplices, church-articles, 
and this enormous ever-repeated thrashing of the straw ? 
A world of rotten straw ; thrashed all into powder ; filUng 
the. Universe and blotting out the stars and Avorlds : — 
Heaven pity you with such a thrashingfloor for world, and 
its draggled dirty farthing-candlo for sun ! There is surely 
other worship possible for the heart of man ; there should 
be other work, or none at all, for the intellect and creative 
faculty of man ! — 

It was here, I find, that Literature first again decisively 
began to dawn on Sterling as the goal he ought to aim at. 
To this, with his poor broken opportunities and such inward 
* London and Westminster Review; Hare, i. 129. 



188 JOHN STERLING. 

faculties as were given him, it became gradually clearer 
that he ought altogether to apply himself. Such result 
was now decisively beginning for him ; the original bent of 
his mind, the dim mandate of all the facts in his outward 
and inward condition ; evidently the one wholesome ten- 
dency for him, which grew ever clearer to the end of his 
course, and gave at least one steady element, and that the 
central one, in his fluctuating existence henceforth. It was 
years still before he got the inky tints of that Coleridgean 
adventure completely bleached from his mind ; but here 
the process had begun, — and I doubt not, we have to thank 
the solitude of Floirac for it a httle ; which is some conso- 
lation for the illness that sent him thither. 

His best hours here were occupied in purely literary oc- 
cupations ; in attempts at composition on his own footing 
again. Unluckily in this too the road for him was now far 
away, after so many years of aberration ; true road not to 
be found all at once. But at least he was seeking it again. 
The Sezto7i's Daughter, which he composed here this sea- 
son, did by no means altogether please us as a Poem ; but 
it was, or deserved to be, very welcome as a symptom of 
spiritual return to the open air. Adieu ye thrashingfloors 
of rotten straw, with bleared tallow-light for sun ; to you 
adieu ! The angry sordid dust-whirlwinds begin to allay 
themselves ; settle into soil underfoot, where their place is : 
glimpses, call them (^stant intimations still much vailed, of 
the everlasting azure, and a much higher and wider priest- 
hood than that under copes and mitres, and wretched dead 
mediaeval monkeries and extinct traditions. This was per- 
haps the chief intellectual result of Sterling's residence at 
Bordeaux, and flight to the Gironde in pursuit of health ; 



TO BORDEAUX. 



189 



which does not otherwise deserve to count as an epoch or 
chapter Avith him. 

In the course of the summer and autumn 1837, I do not 
now find at what exact dates, he made two journeys from 
Bordeaux to England ; the first by himself, on various 
small specific businesses, and uncertain outlooks; th^ sec- 
ond with his family, having at last, after hesitation, decided 
on removal from those parts. ' The cholera had come to 
France ; ' — add to which, I suppose his solitude at Belsito 
was growing irksome, and home and merry England, in 
comparison with the monotony of the Gironde, had again 
grown inviting. He had vaguely purposed to make for 
Nice in the coming winter ; but that also the cholera or 
other causes prevented. His Brother Anthony, a gallant 
young soldier, was now in England, home from the Ionian 
Islands on a visit to old friends and scenes ; and that 
doubtless was a new and strong inducement hitherward. It 
was this summer, I think, that the two Brothers revisited 
together the scene of their early boyhood at Llanblethian ; 
a touching pilgrimage, of which John gave me account in 
reference to something similar of my own in Scotland, 
where I then was.. 

Here, in a Letter to his Mother, is notice of his return 
from the first of these sallies into England ; and how doubt- 
ful all at Bordeaux still was, and how pleasant some little 
certainties at home. The ' Annie ' of whose ' engagement ' 
there is mention, was Miss Anna Barton, Mrs. John Ster- 
ling's younger sister, who, to the joy of more than one 
party, as appears, had accepted his friend Maurice while 
Sterling was in Endand : 



190 JOIIIT STERLING. 

' To 3Irs. Sterling, Kniglitshridge, London. 

'Floh-ac, August 7, 1837. 

' My Dear Mother, — I am now beginning to feel a 
little less dizzy and tired, and will trj to write you a few 
lines-to tell you of my fortunes.' 

' I found my things all right at the Albion. Unluckily 
the steamer could not start from Brighton, and I was 
obliged to go over to Shoreham ; but the weather cleared 
up, and we had rather a smooth passage into France. The 
wind was off the French coast, so that we were in calm 
water at last. We got in about ten o'clock ; — too late for 
the Custom-house. Next morning I settled all my business 
early ; but was detained for horses till nine, — owing to the 
nearness of the Duke of Orleans, which had caused a great 
stir on the roads. I was for the same reason stopped at 
Rouen ; and I was once again stopped, on Saturday for an 
hour, waiting for horses : otherwise I traveled without any 
delay, and in the finest weather, from Dieppe to this place, 
which I reached on Sunday morning at five. I took the 
shortest road, by AlenQon, Saumur and Niort; and was 
very well satisfied with my progress, — at least, till about 
Blaye, on the Garonne, where there was a good deal of 
deep sand, which, instead of running merrily through the 
hour-glass of Time, on the contrary clogged the wheels of 
my carriage. At last, however, I reached home ; and 
found everybody well, and glad to see me. — I felt tired 
and stupid, and not at all disposed to write. But I am 
now sorry I did not overcome my laziness, and send you a 
line to announce my safe arrival ; for I know that at a dis- 



TO MADEIRA. 191 

tance people naturally grow anxious, even "without any 
reason.' 

* It seems now almost like a dream, that I have ever 
been away from hence. But Annie's engagement to Mau- 
rice is, I trust, a lasting memorial of my journey. I find 
Susan quite as much pleased as I expected with her Sister's 
prospects ; and satisfied that nothing could have so well se- 
cured her happiness, and mental (or rather cordial) ad- 
vancement as her union to such a man. On the whole, 
it is a great happiness to me to look back both to this mat- 
ter, and on the kindness and affection of the relatives and 
friends whom I saw in England. It will be a very painful 
disappointment to me if I should be obliged to pass the 
next summer without taking my Wife and Children to our 
own country : — we will, at all events, enjoy the hope of my 
doing so. In the meantime I trust you will enjoy your 
Tour, and on your return spend a quiet and cheerful win- 
ter. Love to my Father, and kindest regards to Mrs. 
Carlyle. — Your affectionate son, 

'John Sterling.' 



192 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER V 



TO MADEIRA. 



Sterlinq's dubieties as to continuing at Bordeaux were 
quickly decided. The cholera in France, the cholera in 
Nice, the — In fact his moorings were now loose ; and hav- 
ing been fairly at sea, he never could anchor himself here 
again. Very' shortly after this Letter, he left Belsito 
again (for good, as it proved) ; and returned to England 
Avith his household, there to consider what should next be 
done. 

On my return from Scotland, that year, perhaps late in 
September, I remember finding him lodged straitly but 
cheerfully, and in happy humor, in a little cottage on 
Blackheath ; whither his Father one day persuaded me to 
drive out with him for dinner. Our Avelcome, I can still 
recollect, was conspicuously cordial ; the place of dinner a 
kind of upper room, half-garret and full of books, which 
seemed to be John's place of stutiy. From a shelf, I re- 
member also, the good soul took down a book modestly 
enough bound in three volumes, lettered on the back 
CarlyWs French 1\ evolution, Avhich had been published 
lately ; this he with friendly banter, bade me look at as a 
first symptom, small but significant, that the book was not 
to die a]l at once. " One copy of it -at least might hope to 
last the date of sheep-leather," I admitted, — and in my 
then mood the little fact was welcome. Our dinner, frank 



TO MADEIRA. 193 

and happy on the part of Sterhng, was peppered with 
abundant jollj satire from his Father ; before tea, I took 
myself away ; towards Woolwich, I remember, where prob- 
ably there was another call to make, and passage home- 
ward by steamer : Sterhng strode along with me a good 
bit of road in the blight sunny evening, full of lively 
friendly talk, and altogether kind and amiable ; and beauti- 
fully sympathetic with the loads he thought he saw on me, 
forgetful of his own. We shook hands on the road near 
the foot of Shooter's Hill : — at which point dim oblivious 
clouds rush down ; and of small or great I remember noth- 
ing more in my history or his for some time. 

Besides running much about among friends, and holding 
counsels for the management of the coming winter, Sterling 
was now considerably occupied with Literature again ; and 
indeed may be said to have already definitely taken it up 
as the one practical pursuit left for him. Some correspond- 
ence with BlackwoocT s Magazine was opening itself, under 
promising omens : now, and more and more henceforth, he 
began to look on Literature as his real employment after 
all ; and was prosecuting it with his accustomed loj^alty 
and ardor. And he continued ever afterwards, in spite of 
such fitful circumstances -and uncertain ontward fluctua- 
tions as his were sure of being, to prosecute it steadily with 
all the strength he had. 

One evening about this time, he came down to us, to 
Chelsea, most likely by appointment and with stipulation 
for privacy ; and read, for our opinion, his Poem of the 
Sexton's Daughter^ which Ave now first heard of. The 
judgment in this house was friendly, but not the most en- 
couraging. We found the piece monotonous, cast in the 
17 



194 JOHN STERLING. 

mould of Wordsworth, deficient in real human fervor or 
depth of melody, dallying on the borders of the infantile 
and " goody-good ;" — in fact, involved still in the shadows 
of the surplice, and inculcating (on hearsay mainly) a weak 
morality, which he would one day find not to be moral at 
all, but in good part maudlin-hypocritical and immoral. As 
indeed was to be said still of most of his performances, 
especially the poetical ; a sickly shadow of the parish- 
church still hanging over them, which he could by no means 
recognize for sickly. Imfrimatur nevertheless was the 
concluding word, — with these grave abatements, and rha- 
damanthine admonitions. To all Avhich Sterling listened 
seriously and in the mildest humor. His reading, it might 
have been added, had much hurt the effect of the piece : a 
dreary pulpit or even conventicle manner ; that flattest 
moaning hoo-hoo of predetermined pathos, with a kind of 
rocking canter introduced by Vy^ay of intonation, each stanza 
the exact fellow of the other, and the dull swing of the 
rocking-horse duly in each ; — no reading could be more un- 
favorable to Sterling's poetry than his own. Such a mode 
of reading, and indeed generally in a man of such vivacity 
the total absence of all gifts for playacting or artistic mim- 
icry in any kind, was a noticeable point. 

After much consultation, it was settled at last that 
Sterling should go to Madeira for the winter. One gray 
dull autumn afternoon, towards the middle of October, I 
remember walking with him to the eastern Dock region, to 
see his ship, and how the final preparations in his own little 
cabin were proceeding there. A dingy little ship, the 
deck crowded with packages, and bustling sailors within 



TO MADEIRA. 195 

eight-and-forty hours of lifting anchor ; a clingy chill smoky 
day, as I have said withal, and a chaotic element and out- 
look, enough to make a friend's heart sad. I admired the 
cheerful careless humor and brisk activity of Sterling, who 
took the matter all on the sunny side, as he was wont in 
such cases. "We came home together in manifold talk : he 
accepted with the due smile my last contribution to his sea- 
equipment, a sixpenny box of German lucifers purchased 
on the sudden in St. James's Street, fit to be offered with 
laughter or with tears or with both ; he was to leave for 
Portsmouth almost immediately, and there go on board. 
Our next news was of his safe arrival in the temperate Isle. 
Mrs. Sterling and the children were left at Knightsbridge ; 
to pass this winter with his Father and Mother. 

At Madeira Sterling did well ; improved in health ; was 
busy with much Literature ; and fell in with society which 
he could reckon pleasant. He was much delighted with 
the scenery of the place ; found the climate wholesome to 
him in a marked degree ; and, with good news from home, 
and kindly interests here abroad, passed no disagreeable 
winter in that exile. There was talking, there was writing, 
there was hope of better health ; he rode almost daily, in 
cheerful busy humor, along those fringed shore-roads : — 
beautiful leafy roads and horse-paths ; with here and there 
a wild cataract and bridge to look at ; and always with the 
soft sky overhead, the dead volcanic mountain on one 
hand, and broad illimitable sea spread out on the other. 
Here are two Letters which give reasonably good account 
of him : 



19G JOHN STERLING. 

' To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Funchal, Madeira, Nov. 16'h, 1837. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have been writing a good many 
letters all in a batch, to go by the same opportunity ; and I 
am thoroughly weary of writing the same things over and 
over again to different people. My letter to you therefore, 
I fear, must have much of the character of remainder bis- 
cuit. But you will receive it as a proof that I do not wish 
you to forget me, though it may be useless for any other 
purpose. 

' I reached this on the 2d, after a tolerably prosperous 
voyage, deformed by some days of sea-sickness, but other- 
wise not to be complained of. I liked my twenty fellow- 
passengers far better than I expected ; — three or four of 
them I liked much, and continue to see frequently. The 
Island too is better than I expected : so that my Barataria 
at least does not disappoint me. The bold rough mountains, 
with mists about their summits, verdure below, and a bright 
sun over all, please me much ; and I ride daily on the 
steep and narrow paved roads, which no wheels ever jour- 
neyed on. The ToAvn is clean, and there its merits end : 
but I am comfortably lodged ; with a large and pleasant 
sitting-room to myself. I have met with much kindness, 
and see all the society I want, — though it is not quite equal 
to that of London, even .excluding Chelsea. 

' I have got about me what Books I brought out ; and 
have read a little, and done some writing for Blackwood, — 
all, I have the pleasure to inform you, prose, nay extremely 
prose. I shall now be more at leisure ; and hope to get 
more steadily to work ; ""though I do not know what I shall 



TO MADEIRA. 197 

begin upon. As to reading, I have been looking at Groethe, 
especially the Life, — much as a shying horse looks at a 
post. In truth, I am afraid of him. I enjoy and admire 
him so much, and feel I could so easily be tempted to go 
along with him. And yet I have a deeply-rooted and old 
persuasion that he was the most splendid of anachronisms. 
A thoroughly, nay intensely Pagan Life, in an age when it 
is men's duty to be Christian. I therefore never take him 
up without a kind of inward check, as if I were trying 
some forbidden spell ; while, on the other hand, there is so 
infinitely much to be learnt from him, and it is so needful 
to understand the world we live in, and our own age, and 
especially its greatest minds, that I cannot bring myself to 
burn my books as the converted Magicians did, or sink 
them as did Prospero. There must, as I think, have been 
some prodigious defect in his mind, to let him hold such 
views as his about women and some other things ; and in 
another respect, I find so much coldness and hollowness as 
to the highest truths, and feel so strongly that the Heaven 
he looks up to is but a vault of ice, — that these two indica- 
tions, leading to the same conclusion, go far to convince me 
he was a profoundly immoral and irreligious spirit, with as 
rare faculties of intelligence as ever belonged to any one. 
All this may be mere goody weakness and twaddle, on my 
part : but it is a persuasion that I cannot escape from : 
though I should feel the doing so to be a deliverance from 
a most painful load. If you could help me, I heartily wish 
you would. I never take him up without high admiration, 
or lay him down without real sorrow for what he chose 
to be. 

' I have been reading nothing else that you would much 
17# 



198 JOHN STERLING. 

care for. Southey's Amadis has amused me ; and Ly ell's 
Geology interested me. Tlie latter gives one the same sort 
of bewildering view of the abysmal extent of Time that 
Astronomy does of Space. I do not think I shall take 
your advice as to learning Portuguese. It is said to be 
very ill spoken here ; and assuredly it is the most direful 
series of nasal twangs I ever heard. One gets on quite 
well with English. 

' The people here are, I believe, in a very low con- 
dition ; but they do not appear miserable. I am told that 
the influence of the priests mi.kes the peasantry all Mi- 
guelites ; but it is said that nobody wants any more 
revolutions. There is no appearance of riot or crime ; and 
they are all extremely civil. I was much interested by 
learning that Columbus once lived here, before he found 
America and fame. I have been to see a deserted quinta 
(country-house), where there is a great deal of curious old 
sculpture, in relief, upon the masonry ; many of the figures, 
which are nearly as large as life, representing soldiers clad 
and armed much as I should suppose those of Cortez were. 
There are no buildings about the Town, of the smallest pre- 
tensions to beauty or yharra of any kind. On the whole, if 
Madeira were one's world, life would certainly rather tend 
to stagnate ; but as a temporary refuge, a niche in an old 
ruin where one is sheltered from the shower, it has great 
merit. I am more comfortable and contented than I 
expected to be, so far from home and from everybody I am 
closely connected with : but, of course, it is at best a toler- 
able exile. 

' Tell Mrs. Carlyle that I have written, since I have 
been here, and am going to send to Blackwood, a humble 



TO MADEIRA. 199 

imitation of her Watch and Canary-Bird^ entitled Tlie Suit 
of Armor and the Skeleton* I am conscious that I am far 
from having reached the depth and fullness of despau- and 
mockery which distinguish the original ! But in truth 
there is a lightness of tone about her style, which I hold 
to be invaluable : where she makes hairstrokes, I make 
blotches. I have a vehement suspicion that my Dialogue 
is an entire failure ; but I cannot be plagued with it any 
longer. Tell her I will not send her messages, but will 
write to her soon. — Meanwhile I am affectionately hers and 
yours, John Sterling.' 

The next is to his Brother-in-law ; and in a still hope- 
fuller tone : 

' To Charles Barton^ Esq/\ 

' Fauchal, Madeira, March 3, 1838. 

'My DEAR Charles, — I have often been thinking of 
you and your whereabouts in Germany, and wishing I 
knew more about you ; and at last it occurred to me that 
you might perhaps have the same wish about me, and that 
therefore I should do well to write to yo\x. 

' I have been here exactly four months, having arrived 
on the 2d of November, — my wedding-day ; and though 
you perhaps may not think it a compliment to Susan, I 
have seldom passed four months more cheerfully and agree- 
ably. I have of course felt my absence from my family, 

* Curae out, as will soon appear, in Blackwood (February, 1838). 
t Hotel de I'Eurojie, Berlin,' added in Mrs. Sterling's hand. 



200 JOHN STERLING. 

and missed the society of my friends ; for there is not a 
person here whom I knew before I left England. But, on 
the whole, I have been in good health, and actively em- 
ployed. I have a good many agreeable and valuable 
acquaintances, one or two of whom I hope I may hereafter 
reckon as friends. The weather has generally been fine, 
and never cold ; and the scenery of the Island is of a 
beauty which you unhappy Northern people can have little 
conception of. 

' It consists of a great mass of volcanic mountains, cov- 
ered in their lower parts with cottages, vines^and patches 
of vegetables. When you pass through, or over the central 
ridge, and get towards the North, there are woods of trees, 
of the laurel kind, covering the wild steep slopes, and form- 
ing some of the strangest and most beautiful prospects I 
have ever seen. Towards the interior, the forms of the 
hills become more abrupt, and loftier ; and give the notion 
of very recent volcanic disturbances, thougii in fact there 
has been nothing of the kind since the discovery of the 
Island by Europeans. Among these mountains, the dark 
deep precipices, and narrow ravines with small streams at 
the bottom ; the basaltic knobs and ridges on the summits ; 
and the perpetual play of mist and cloud around them, 
under this bright sun and clear sky, — form landscapes 
Avhich you would thoroughly enjoy, and which I much wish 
I could give you a notion of. The Town is on the south, 
and of course the sheltered side of the Island ; perfectly 
protected from the North and East ; although we have seen 
sometimes patches of bright snow on the dark peaks in the 
distance. It is a neat cheerful place ; all built of gray 
stone, but having many of the houses colored white or red. 



TO MADEIRA. 201 

There is not a really handsome building in it, but there is 
a general aspect of comfort and solidity. The shops are 
very poor. The English do not mix at all with the Portu- 
guese. The Bay is a very bad anchorage ; but is wide, 
bright and cheerful ; and there are some picturesque points, 
— one a small black island, — scattered about it. 

' I lived till a fortnight ago in lodgings, having two 
rooms, one a very good one ; and paying for every thing 
fifty-six dollars a month, the dollar being four shillings and 
twopence. This you will see is dear ; but I could make no 
better arrangement, for there is an unusual affluence of 
strangers this year. I have now come to live with a friend, 
a Dr. Calvert, in a small house of our own, where I am 
much more comfortable, and live greatly cheaper. He is a 
friend of Mrs. Percival's ; about my age, an Oriel man, 
and a very superior person. I think the chances are, we 
shall go home together.' * * * 4 j cannot tell you of 
all the other people I have become familiar with ; and shall 
only mention in addition Bingham Baring, eldest son of 
Lord Ashburton, who was here for some Aveeks on account 
of a dying brother, and whom I saw a great deal of. He 
is a pleasant, very good-natured and rather clever man ; 
Conservative Member for North Staffordshire. 

' During the first two months I was here, I rode a great 
deal about the Island, having a horse regularly ; and was 
much in agreeable company, seeing a great deal of beautiful 
scenery. Since then, the weather has been much more 
unsettled, though not cold ; and I have gone about less, as 
I cannot risk the being wet. But I have spent my time 
pleasantly, reading and writing. I have written a good 



202 JOHN STERLING. 

many things for Blackwood ; one of which, the Armor and 
the Skeleton, I see, is printed in the February Number. I 
have just sent them a long Tale, called the Oni/x Ring, 
which cost me a good deal of trouble ; and the extravagance 
of "which, I think would amuse you; but its length may 
prevent its appearance in Blackwood. If so, I think I 
should make a volume of it. I have also written some 
poems ; and shall probably publish the Sexton's Daughter 
when I return. 

' My health goes on most favorably. I have had no 
attack of the chest this spring ; which has not happened to 
me since the spring before we went to Bonn; and I am 
told, if I take care, I may roll along for years. But I 
have little hope of being allowed to spend the four first 
months of any year in England ; and the question will be, 
Whether to go at once to Italy, by way of Germany and 
Switzerland, with my family, or to settle with them in Eng- 
land, perhaps at Hastings, and go abroad myself when it 
may be necessary. I cannot decide till I return ; but I 
think the latter the most probable. 

' To my dear Charles I do not like to use the ordinary 
forms of ending a letter, for they are very inadequate to 
express my sense of your long and most unvarying kind- 
ness ; but be assured no one living could say with more 
sincerity that he is ever affectionately yours, 

John Sterling.' 

Other Letters give cccasionally views of the shadier side 
of things ; dark broken weather, in the sky and in the 
mind ; ugly clouds covering one's poor fitful transitory 



TO MADEIRA. 203 

prospect, for a time, as they might well do in Sterling's 
case. Meanwhile Ave perceive his literary business is fast 
developing itself; amid all his confusions, he is never idle 
long. Some of his best Pieces, — the Onyx Hing, for one, 
as we perceive, — were written here this winter. Out of 
the turbid whirlpool of the days he strives assiduously to 
snatch what he can. 

Sterling's communications with Blachvood^s Magazine^ 
had now issued in some open sanction of him by Professor 
Wilson, the distinguished presiding spirit of that Periodical ; 
a fact naturally of high importance to him under the liter- 
ary point of view. For Wilson, with his clear flashing eye 
and great genial heart, had at once recognized Sterling ; 
and lavished stormily, in his wild generous way, torrents of 
praise on him in the editorial comments : which undoubt- 
edly was one of the gratefullest literary baptisms, by fire or 
by water, that could befall a soul like Sterling's. He bore 
it very gently, being indeed past the age to have his head 
turned by anybody's praises ; nor do I think the exaggera- 
tion that was in these eulogies did him any ill whatever ; 
while surely their generous encouragement did him much 
good, in his solitary struggle towards new activity under 
such impediments as his. Laudari a laudato ; to be called 
noble by one whom you and the world recognize as noble : 
this great satisfaction, never perhaps in such a degree 
before or after, had now been vouchsafed to Sterling ; and 
was, as I compute, an important fact for him. He pro- 
ceeded on his pilgrimage with new energy, and felt more 
and more as if authentically consecrated to the same. 

The Onyx Ring, a curious Tale, with wild improbable 



204 JOnN STERLING. 

basis, but with a noble glow of coloring and with other high 
merits iu it, a Tale still worth reading, in Avhich, among the 
imaginary characters, various friends of Sterling's are 
shadowed forth, not always in the truest manner, came out 
in Blackwood in the winter of this year. Surely a very 
high talent for painting, both of scenery and persons, is 
visible in this Fiction ; the promise of a Novel such as we 
have few. But there wants maturing, Avants purifying of 
clear from unclear ; — properly there want patience and 
steady depth. The basis, as we said, is wild and loose ; 
and in the details, lucent often with fine color, and dipt in 
beautiful sunshine, there Ure several things missecn, untrue, 
which is the worst species of mispainting. Witness, as 
Sterling himself would have by and by admitted, the 
' empty clockcase ' (so we called it) which he has labelled 
Goethe, — which puts all other untruths in the Piece to 
silence. 

One of the great alleviations of his exile at Madeira he 
has already celebrated to us ; the pleasant circle of society 
he fell into there. Great luck, thinks Sterling, in this 
voyage ; as indeed there was : but he himself, moreover, 
was readier than most men to fall into pleasant circles 
everywhere, being singularly prompt to. make the most of 
any circle. Some of his Madeira acquaintanceships Avere 
really good ; and one of them, if not more, ripened into 
comradeship and friendship for him. He says, as we saw, 
' The chances are, Calvert and I will come together.' 

Among the English in pursuit of health, or in flight from 
fatal disease, that winter, was this Dr. Calvert ; an excel- 



TO MADEIRA. 205 

lent ingenious cheery Cumberland gentleman, about Ster- 
ling's age, and in a deeper stage of ailment, this not being 
his first visit to Madeira : he, warmly joining himself to 
Sterling, as we have seen, was warmly received by him ; 
so that there soon grew a close and free intimacy between 
them ; which for the next three years, till poor Calvert 
ended his course, was a leading element in the history of 
both. Companionship in incurable malady, a touching 
bond of union, was by no means purely or chiefly a com- 
panionship in misery in their case. The sunniest inextin- 
guishable cheerfulness shone, through all manner of clouds, 
in both, Calvert had been traveling physician in some 
family of rank, who had rewarded him with a pension, 
shielding his own ill health from one sad evil. Being 
hopelessly gone in pulmonary disorder, he now moved 
about among friendly climates and places, seeking what 
alleviation there might be ; often spending his summers in 
the house of a sister in the environs of London ; an insa- 
tiable rider on his little brown pony ; always, wherever you 
might meet him, one of the cheeriest of men. He had 
plenty of speculation too, clear glances of all kinds into 
religious, social, moral concerns ; and pleasantly incited 
Sterling's outpourings on such subjects. He could' re- 
port of fashionable persons and manners, in a fine human 
Cumberland manner ; loved art, a great collector of draw- 
ings ; he had endless help and ingenuity ; and was in short 
every way a very human, lovable, good and nimble man, — 
the laughing blue eyes of him, the clear cheery soul of him, 
still redolent of the, fresh Northern breezes and transparent 
Mountain streams. With this Calvert, Sterluig formed a 
IS 



206 JOHN STERLING. 

natural intimacy ; and they were to each other a great pos- 
session, mutually enlivening many a dark day during the 
next three years. They did come home together this 
spring ; and subsequently made several of these health- 
journeys in partnership. 



LITERATURE. 207 



CHAPTER VI. 

literature: the sterling club. 

In spite of these wanderings, Sterling's course in life, so 
far as his poor life could have any course or aim beyond 
that of screening itself from swift death, was getting more 
and more clear to him ; and he pursued it diligently, in the 
only way permitted him, by hasty snatches, in the intervals 
of continual fluctuation, change of place and other inter- 
ruption. 

Such, once for all, were the conditions appointed him. 
And it must be owned he had, with a most kindly temper, 
adjusted himself to these ; nay you would have said, he 
loved them ; it was almost as if he would have chosen them 
as the suitablest. Such an adaptation was there in him of 
voHtion to necessity ; — for indeed they both, if well seen 
into, proceeded from one source. Sterling's bodily disease 
was the expression, under physical conditions, of the too 
vehement life which, under the moral, the intellectual and 
other aspects, incessantly struggled within him. Too ve- 
hement ; — which would have required a frame of oak and 
iron to contain it : in a thin though most wiry body of flesh 
and bone, it incessantly ' wore holes,' and so found outlet 
for itself. He could take no rest, he had never learned 
that art ; he was, as we often reproached him, fatally inca- 
pable of sitting still. Rapidity, as of pulsing auroras, as of 
dancing lightnings ; rapidity in all forms characterized him. 



208 JOHN STERLING. 

This, which was his bane, in many senses, being the real 
origin of his disorder, and of such continual necessity to 
move and change, was also his antidote ; so far as antidote 
there might be ; enabling him to love change, and to snatch, 
as few others could have done,' from the waste chaotic 
years, all tumbled into ruin by incessant change, what hours 
and minutes of available turned up. He had an incredible 
faciUty of labor. He flashed with most piercing glance 
into a subject; gathered it up into organic ut<-erability, 
with truly wonderful despatch, considering the success and 
truth attained ; and threw it on paper with a swift felicity, 
ingenuity, brilliancy and general excellence, of -which, 
under such conditions of swiftness, I have never seen a 
parallel. Essentially an improviser genius ; as his Father 
too was, and of admirable completeness he too, though 
under a very different form. 

If Sterling has done little in Literature, we may ask. 
What other man than he, in such circumstances, could have 
done any thing ? In virtue of these rapid faculties, which 
otherwise cost him so dear, he has built together, out of 
those wavering boiling quicksands of his few later years, a 
result which may justly surprise us.' There is actually 
some result in those poor Two Volumes gathered from him, 
such as they are ; he that reads there will not wholly lose 
his time, nor rise with a malison instead of a blessing on the 
writer. Here actually is a real seer-glance, of some com- 
pass, into the world of our day ; blessed glance, once more, 
of an eye that is human ; truer than one of a thousand, and 
beautifully capable of making others see with it. I have 
known considerable temporary reputations gained, consid- 
erable piles of temporary guineas, with loud reviewing and 



THE STERLING CLUB. 209 

the like to match, on - a far less basis than lies in those two 
volumes. Those also, I expect, will be held in memory by 
the world, one way or other, till the world has extracted all 
its benefit from them. Graceful, ingenious and illuminative 
reading, of their sort, for all manner of inquiring souls. A 
little verdant flowery island of poetic intellect, of melodious 
human verity ; sunlit island founded on the rocks ; — 
which the enormous circumambient contents of mown reed- 
grass and floating lumber, with their mountain-ranges of 
ejected stable-litter however alpine, cannot by any means 
or chance submerge : nay, I expect, they will not even 
quite hide it, this modest little island, from the well-discern- 
ing ; but will float past it towards the place appointed for 
them, and leave said island standing. Allah kereem, say 
the Arabs I And of the English also some still know that 
there is a difierence in the material of mountains ! — 

As it is this last little result, the amount of his poor and 
ever-interrupted literary labor, that henceforth forms the 
essential history of Sterling, we need not dwell at too much 
length on the foreign journeys, disanchorings, and nomadic 
vicissitudes of household, which occupy his few remaining 
years, and which are only the disastrous and accidental 
arena of this. He had now, excluding his early and more 
deliberate residence in the West Indies, made two flights 
abroad, once with his family, once without, in search of 
health. He had two more, in rapid succession, to make, 
and many more to meditate ; and in the whole from Bays- 
water to the end, his family made no fewer than five com- 
plete changes of abode, for his sake. But these cannot be 
accepted as in any sense epochs in his life : the one last 
18^ 



210 JOHN STERLING. 

epoch of his life was that of his internal change towards 
Literature as his work in the world ; and we need not 
linger much on these, which are the mere outer accidents 
of that, and had no distinguished influence in modifying 
that. 

Friends still hoped the unrest of that brilliant too-rapid 
soul would abate with years. Nay the doctors sometimes 
promised, on the physical side, a like result ; prophesying 
that, at forty-five or some mature age, the stress of disease 
might quit the lungs, and direct itself to other quarters of 
the system. But no such result was appointed for us : 
neither forty-five itself, nor the ameliorations promised 
then, were ever to be reached. Four voyages abroad, 
three of them without his family, in flight from death ; and 
at home, for a like reason, five complete shiftings of abode : 
in such wandering manner, and not otherwise, had Sterling 
to continue his pilgrimage till it ended. 

Once more I must say, his cheerfulness throughout was 
wonderful. A certain grimmer shade, coming gradually 
over him, might perhaps be noticed in the concluding 
years ; not impatience properly, yet the consciousness how 
much he needed patience ; something more caustic in his 
tone of wit, more trenchant and indignant occasionally in 
his tone of speech : but at no moment was his activity 
bewildered or abated, nor did his composure ever give way. 
No ; both his activity and his composure he bore with him, 
through all weathers, to the final close ; and on the whole, 
right manfully he walked his wild stern way towards the 
goal, and like a Roman wrapt his mantle round him when 
he fell. Let. us glance, with brevity, at what he saw and 
suffered in his remaining pilgrimings and changings ; and 



THE STERLING CLUB. 211 

count up what fractions of spiritual fruit he realized to us 
from them. 

Calvert and he returned from Madeira in spring 1838. 
Mrs. Sterling and the family had lived in Knightsbridge 
•with his Father's people through winter : they now changed 
to Blackheath, or ultimately Hastings, and he with them, 
coming up to London pretty often ; uncertain what T.'as to 
be done for next winter. Literature went on briskly here : 
Blackwood had from him, besides the Onyx Ring which 
soon came out with due honor, assiduous almost monthly 
contributions in prose and verse. The series called Hymns 
of a Hermit was now going on ; eloquent melodies, tainted 
to me with something of the same disease as the Sexto7i's 
Daughte?', though perhaps in a less degree, considering 
that the strain was in a so much higher pitch. Still better, 
in clear eloquent prose, the series of detached thoughts 
entitled Ci'ystals fi-om a Cavern ; of which the set of frag- 
ments, generally a little larger in compass, called Tlioiiglds 
and Images and again those called Sayings and Essay, 
ings* are properly continuations. Add to which, his 
friend John Mill had now charge of a Review, The Lon- 
don and Westminster its name ; wherein Sterling's assist- 
ance, ardently desired, was freely aflforded, with satisfac- 
tion to Iboth parties, in this and the following years. An 
Essay on Montaigne^ with the notes and reminiscences al- 
ready spoken of, was Sterling's first contribution here ; then 
one on Simonides ;f both of the present season. 

On these and other businesses, slight or important, he 
was often running up to London ; and gave us almost the 

* Hare, ii. 95-167. f lb. i. 129, 1R8. 



212 



JOHN STERLING. 



feeling of his being resident among us. In order to meet 
the most or a good many of his friends at once on such 
occasions, he now furthermore contrived the scheme of a 
little Club, where monthly over a frugal dinner some re- 
union might take place ; that is, where friends of his, and 
withal such friends of theirs as suited, — and in fine, where 
a small select company definable as persons to whom it was 
pleasant to talk together, — might have a little opportunity 
of talking. The scheme was approved by the persons 
concerned : I have a copy of the Original Regulations, 
probably drawn up by Sterhng, a very solid lucid piece of 
economics ; and the List of the proposed Members, signed 
' James Spedding, Secretary,' and dated ' 8 August, 1838.'* 



* Here in a Note they are, if 
marks of interrogation, attached 
otherwise questionable, are in the 

J. D. Acland, Esq. 

Hon. W. B. Baring. 

Rev. J. W. Blakesley. 

W. Boxall, Esq. 

T. Cariyle, Esq. 

Hon. E. Cavendish (?) 

H. N. Coleridge, Esq. (?) 

J. W. Colville, Esq. 

Allan Cunningham, Esq. (?) 

Rev. H. Dpnu. 

F. H. Doyle, Esq. 

C. L. Eastlake, Esq. 
Alex. Ellice, Esq. 
J. F. Elliot, Esq. 
Copley Fielding, Esq. 
Rev. J. C. Hare. 

Sir Edmund Head (?) 

D. D. Heath, Esq. 

G. C. Lewis, Esq. 

H. L. Lushington, Esq. 
The Lord Lyttleton. 
C. Macarthy, Esq. 



they can be important to any body. The 
to some Names as not yet consulted, or 
Secretary's hand : 

H. Maiden, Esq. 
J. S. Mill, Esq. 
R. M. Slilnes, Esq. 
R. Monteith,Esq. 
S. A. O'Brien, Esq. 
Sir F. Palgrave (?) 
W. F. Pollok, Esq. 
Philip Pusey, Esq. 
A. Rio, Esq. 
C. Romilly, Esq. 
James Spedding, Esq. 
Rev. John Sterling. 
Alfred Tennyson, Esq. 
Rev. Connop Thirlwall. 
Rev. W. Hepworth Thompson. 
Edward Twistleton, Esq. 
G. S. Venables, Esq. 
Samuel Wood, Esq. 
Rev. T. Worsley. 



James Spedding, Secretary. 
August 8, 1838. 



THE STERLING CLUB, 213 

Tho Club grew ; was at first called the Anonymous Club ; 
then, after some months of success, in compliment to the 
founder who had now left us again, the Sterling Club ; — 
under which latter name, it once lately, for a time, owing 
to the Religious Newspapers, became rather famous in the 
world ! In Avhich strange circumstances the name was 
again altered, to suit weak brethren ; and the Club still 
subsists, in a sufficiently flourishing though happily once 
more a private condition. That is the origin and genesis 
of poor Sterling's Club ; which, having honestly paid the 
shot for itself at Will's Coffee-House or elsewhere, rashly 
^ncied its bits of affairs w^ere quite settled ; and once little 
thought of getting into Books of History with theuf ! — 

But now, Autumn approaching. Sterling had to quit 
Clubs, for matters of sadder consideration. A new remo- 
val, what we call ' his third peregrinity,' had to be decided 
on ; and it was resolved that Rome should be the goal of 
it, the journey to be done in company with Calvert, whom 
also the Italian climate might be made to serve instead of 
Madeira. One of the liveliest recollections I have, con- 
nected with the Anonymous Club, is that of once escorting 
Sterling, after a certain meeting there, which I had seen 
only towards the end, and now remember nothing of, — 
except that, on breaking up, he proved to be encumbered 
with a carpet-bag, and could not at once find a cab for 
Knightsbridge. Some small bantering hereupon, during 
the instants of embargo. But we carried his carpet-bag, 
slinging it on my stick, two or three of us alternately, 
through dusty vacant streets, under the gas-lights and the 
stars, towards the surest cab-stand ; still jesting, or pre- 



214 JOHN STERLING. 

tending to jest, he and we, not in the mirthfullest manner ; 
and had (I suppose) our own feelings about the poor 
Pilgrim, who was to go on the morrow, and had hurried to 
meet us in this way, as the last thing before leaving Eng- 
land. 



ITALY. 215 



CHAPTER VII. 



ITALY. 



The journey to Italy was undertaken by advice of Sir 
James Clark, reckoned the chief authority in pulmonary 
therapeutics ; who prophesied important improvements 
from it, and perhaps even the possibility henceforth of liv- 
ing all the year in some English home. Mrs. Sterling 
and the children continued in a house avowedly temporary, 
a furnished house at Hastings, through the winter. The 
two friends had set off for Belgium, while the due warmth 
was still in the air. They traversed Belgium, looking well 
at pictures and such objects ; ascended the Rhine ; rapidly 
traversed Switzerland and the Alps ; issuing upon Italy 
and Milan, with immense appetite for pictures, and time 
still to gratify themselves in that pursuit, and be deliberate 
in their approach to Rome. We will take this free-flowing 
sketch of their passage over the Alps ; written amid ' the 
rocks of the Arona,' — Santo Borromeo's country, and poor 
little Mignon's ! The ' elder Perdonnets ' are opulent 
Lausanne people, to whose late son Sterling had been very 
kind in Madeira the year before : 

* To Mrs. Sterling, Knigldshridge, London. 

• Arona, on the Lago Maggiore, Oct. 8th, 1838. 

* My dear Mother, — I bring down the story of my pro- 
ceedings to the present time since the 29th of September. 



216 JOHN STERLING. 

I think it must have been after that day that I was at _a 
great breakfast at the elder Perdonnets', with whom I had 
decHned to dine, not choosing to go out at night. * * * 
I was taken bj my hostess to see several pretty pleasure- 
grounds and points of view in the neighborhood ; and lat- 
terly Calvert was better, and able to go with us. He was 
in force again, and our passports were all settled so as to 
enable us to start in the morning of the 2d, after taking leave 
of our kind entertainer with thanks for her infinite kindness. 

' We reached St. Maurice early that evening ; having 
had the Dent du Midi close to us for several hours ; glit- 
tering like the top of a silver teapot, far up in the sky. 
Our course lay along the Valley of the Rhone ; which is 
considered one of the least beautiful parts of Switzerland, 
and perhaps for this reason pleased us, as we Lad not been 
prepared to expect much. We saw, before reaching the 
foot of the Alpine pass at Brieg, two rather celebrated 
Waterfalls ; the one the Pissevache, which has no more 
beauty than any waterfall one hundred or two hundred feet 
high must necessarily have : the other near Tourtemagne 
is much more pleasing, having foliage round it, and being 
in a secluded dell. If you buy a Swiss Waterfall, choose 
this one. 

' Our second day took us through Martigny to Sion, 
celebrated for its picturesque towers upon detached hills, 
for its strong Romanism and its population of cretins, — 
that is, maimed idiots, having the goitre. It looked to us 
a more thriving place than we expected. They are build- 
ing a great deal ; among other things, a new Bishop's Pal- 
ace and a new Nunnery, — to inhabit either of which ex 
officio I feel myself very unsuitable. From Sion we came 



ITALY. 217 

to Brieg ; a little village in a nook, close under an enor- 
mous mountain and glacier, where it lies like a molehill, or 
something smaller, at the foot of a haystack. Here also 
we slept ; and the next day our voiturier, who had brought 
us from Lausanne, started with us up the Simplon Pass ; 
helped on by two extra horses. 

' The beginning of the road was rather cheerful ; having 
a good deal of green pasturage, and some mountain villa- 
ges ; but it soon becomes dreary and savage in aspect, and 
but for our bright sky and warm air, would have been truly 
dismal. However, we gained gradually a distinct and 
near view of several large glaciers ; and reached at last 
the high and melancholy valley of the Upper Alps ; where 
even the pines become scanty, and no sound is heard but 
the wheels of one's carriage, except when there happens to 
be a storm or an avalanche, neither of which entertained 
us. There is, here and there, a small stream of water 
pouring from the snow ; but this is rather a monotonous 
accompaniment to the general desolation than an interrup- 
tion of it. The road itself is certainly very good, and 
impresses one with a strong notion of human power. But 
the common descriptions are much exaggerated ; and many 
of what the Guide-Books call " galleries " are merely parts 
of the road supported by a wall built against the rock, and 
have nothing like a roof above them. The " stupendous 
bridges," as they are called, might be packed, a dozen 
together, into one arch of London Bridge ; and they are 
seldom even very striking from the depth below. The 
roadway is excellent, and kept in the best order. On the 
whole, I am very glad to have traveled the most famous 
road in Europe, and to have had delightful weather for 
19 



218 JOHN STERLING. 

doing so, as indeed we have had ever since we left Lau- 
sanne. The Italian /:!t-!sCt:nt is greatly more remarkable 
than the other side. 

' We slept near the top, at the Village of Simplon, in a 
very fair and well-warmed inn, close to a mountain stream, 
which is one of the great ornaments of this side of the 
road. We have here passed into a region of granite, from 
that of limestone and what is called gneiss. The valleys 
are sharper and closer, — like cracks in a hard and solid 
mass ; and there is much more of the startling contrast of 
light and shade, as well as more angular boldness of out- 
line ; to all wlfich the more abundant waters add a fresh 
and vivacious interest. Looking back through one of these 
abysmal gorges, one sees two torrents dashing together ; 
the precipice and ridge on one side, pitch-black with shade ; 
and that on the other all flaming gold ; while behind rises, 
in a huge cone, one of the glacier summits of the chain. 
The stream at one's feet rushes at a leap some two hundred 
feet down, and is bordered with pines and beeches, strug- 
gling through a ruined world of clefts and boulders. I 
never saw any thing so much resembling some of the 
Circles described by Dante. From Simplon we made for 
Duomo d'Ossola ; having broken out, as through the mouth 
of a mine, into green and fertile valleys full of vines and 
chestnuts, and white villages, — in short, into sunshine and 
Italy. 

' At this place we dismissed our Swiss voiturier, and 
took an Italian one ; who conveyed us to Omegna on the 
Lake of Orta ; a place little visited by English travelers, 
but which fully repaid us the trouble of going there. We 
were lodged in a simple and even rude Italian inn ; where 



ITALY. 219 

thej cannot speak a word of Frencli ; where we occupied 
a barnlike room, with a huge chimney fit to lodge a hun- 
dred ghosts, whom we expelled by dint of a hot woodfire. 
There were two beds, and as it happened good ones, in this 
strange old apartment ; which was adorned by pictures of 
Architecture, and by Heads of Saints, better than many 
at the Royal Academy Exhibition, and which one paid 
nothing for looking at. The thorough Italian character of 
the whole scene amused us, much more than Maurice's at 
Paris would have done ; for we had voluble, commonplace 
good humor, with the aspect and accessories of a den of 
banditti. 

' To-day we have seen the Lake of Orta, have walked for 
some miles among its vineyards and chestnuts ; and thence 
have come, by Baveno, to this place ; — having seen by the 
way, I believe, the most beautiful part of the Lago Mag- 
giore, and certainly the most cheerful, complete and ex- 
tended example of fine scenery I have ever fallen in with. 
Here we are, much to my wonder, — for it seems too good 
to be true, — fairly in Italy ; and as yet my journey has 
been a pleasanter and more instructive, and in point of 
health a more successful one, than I at all imagined 
possible. Calvert and I go on as well as can be. I let 
him have his way about natural science, and he only laughs 
benignly when he thinks me absurd in my moral specula- 
tions. My only regrets are caused by my separation from 
my family and friends, and by the hurry I have been living 
in, which has prevented me doing any work, — and com- 
pelled me to write to you at a good deal faster rate than 
the vapore moves on the Lago Maggiore. It will take me 
tomorrow to Sesto Calende, whence we go to Varese. We 



220 JOHN STERLING. 

shall not be in Milan for some days. Write thither, if you 
are kind enough to Avrite at all, till I give you another 
address. Love to my Father. 

Your affectionate son, 

' John Sterling.' 

Omitting Milan, Florence nearly all, and much about 
' Art,' Michael Angelo, and other aerial matters, here are 
some select terrestrial glimpses, the fittest I can find, of 
his progress towards Rome : 

Lucca, Nov. 27th, 1838 (To Ms Mother).—'' I had 
dreams, like other people, before I came here, of ■vvhat the 
Lombard Lakes must be ; and the week I spent among 
them has left me an image, not only more distinct, but far 
more warm, shining and various, and more deeply attract- 
ive in innumerable respects, than all I had before con- 
ceived of them. And so also it has been with Florence ; 
where I spent three weeks : enough for the first hazy radi- 
ant dawn of sympathy to pass away ; yet constantly adding 
an increase of knowledge and of love, while I examined, 
and tried to understand, the wonderful minds that have 
left behind them there such abundant traces of their pres- 
':^nce.' ' On Sunday, the day before I left Florence, I 
went to the highest part of the Grand Duke's Garden of 
Boboli, which commands a view of most of the City, and 
of the vale of the Arno to the westward ; where, as we 
had been visited by several rainy days, and now at last 
had a very fine one, the whole prospect was in its highest 
beauty. The mass of buildings, chiefly on the other side 
of the River, is sufficient to fill the eye, without perplex- 
ing the mind by vastness like that of London ; and its 



ITALY. 221 

name and history, its outline and large and picturesque 
buildings, give a grandeur of a higher order than that of 
mere multitudinous extent. The hills that border the Val- 
ley of the Arno are also very pleasing and striking to look 
upon ; and the view of the rich Plain, glimmering away 
into blue distance, covered with an endless web of villages 
and country-houses, is one of the most delightful images of 
human well-being I have ever seen.' — 

' Very shortly before leaving Florence, I went through 
the house of Michael Angelo ; which is still possessed by 
persons of the same family, descendants, I beheve, of his 
Nephew. There is in it his " first work in marble," as it 
is called ; and a few drawings, — all with the stamp of his 
enginery upon them, which was more powerful than all the 
steam in London.' — ' On the -whole, though I have done no 
work in Florence that can be of any use or pleasure to 
others, except my Letters to my Wife, — I leave it with the 
certainty of much valuable knowledge gained there, and 
with a most pleasant remembrance of the busy and thought- 
ful days I owe to it. 

' We left Florence before seven yesterday morning,' 
26th November ; ' for this place ; traveling on the north- 
ern side of the Arno, by Prato, Pistoia, Pescia. We tried 
to see some old frescoes in a Church at Prato ; but found 
the priests all about, saying mass ; and of course did not 
venture to put our hands into a hive where the bees were 
buzzing and on the wing. Pistoia we only coasted. A 
little on one side of it, there is a Hill, the first on the road 
from Florence ; which we walked up, and had a very lively 
and brilliant prospect over the road we had just traveled, 
19* 



222 JOHN STERLING. 

and the Town of Pistoia. Thence to this place the whole 
land is beautiful, and in the highest degree prosperous, — 
in short, to speak metaphorically, all dotted with Leghorn 
bonnets, and streaming with olive-oil. The girls here are 
said to employ themselves chiefly in platting straw, which 
is a profitable employment ; and the slightness and quiet of 
the work are said to be much more favorable to beauty 
than the coarser kinds of labor performed by the country- 
women elsewhere. Certain it is that I saw more pretty 
women in Pescia, in the hour I spent there, than I ever 
before met with among the same numbers of the " phare 
sect." Wherefore, as a memorial of them, I bought there 
several Legends of Female Sainfs and Martyrs, and of 
other Ladies quite the reverse and held up as warnings ; 
all of which are written in ottava rima, and sold for three- 
halfpence apiece. But unhappily I have not yet had time 
to read them. This Town has 30,000 inhabitants, and is 
surrounded by Walls, laid out as walks, and evidently not 
at present intended to be besieged, — for which reason, this 
morning, I merely walked on them round the Town, and 
did not besiege them.' 

' The Cathedral ' of Lucca ' contains some relics ; which 
have undoubtedly worked miracles on the imagination of 
the people hereabouts. The Grandfather of all Relics (as 
the Arabs would say) in the place is the Vblto Santo, 
which is a Face of the Saviour appertaining to a wooden 
Crucifix. Now you must know that, after the ascension of 
Christ, Nicodemus wa^ ordered by an Angel to carve an 
image of him ; and went accordingly with a hatchet, and 
cut down a cedar for that purpose. He then proceeded to 
carve the figure ; and being tired, fell asleep before he had 



ITALY. 223 

done the face ; which however, on awaking, he found com- 
pleted bj celestial aid. This image was brought to Lucca 
from Leghorn I think, where it had arrived in a ship, 
" more than a thousand years ago," and has ever since 
been kept, in purple and fine linen and gold and diamonds, 
quietly working miracles. I saw the gilt Shrine of it ; and 
also a Hatchet which refused to cut off the head of an 
innocent man, who had been condemned to death, and who 
prayed to the Volto Santo. I suppose it is by way of 
economy (they being a frugal people) that the Italians 
have their Book of Common Prayer and their Arabian 
Nights' Entertainments condensed into one.' 

Pisa, December 2d, 1838 (^To the same). — ' Pisa is very 
unfairly treated in all the Books I have read. It seems to 
me a quiet, but very agreeable place ; with wide clean 
streets, and a look of stability and comfort ; and I admire 
the Cathedral and its appendages more, the more I see 
them. The leaning of the Tower is to my eye decidedly 
unpleasant ; but it is a beautiful building nevertheless, and 
the view from the top is, under a bright sky, remarkably 
lively and satisfactory. The Lucchese Hills form a fine 
mass, and the sea must in clear weather be very distinct. 
There was some haze over it when I was up, though the 
land was all clear. I could just see the Leghorn Light- 
house. Leghorn itself I shall not be able to visit.' 

' The quiet gracefulness of Italian hfe, and the mental 
maturity and vigor of Germany, have a great charm when 
compared with the restless whirl of England, and the chorus 
of minged yells and groans sent up by our parties and sects, 
and by the suffering and bewildered crowds of the laboring 



22i JOHN STERLING. 

people. Our politics make my heart ache, whenever I 
think of them. The base selfish frenzies of factions seem 
to me, at this distance, half diabolic ; and I am out of the 
way of knowing any thing that may be quietly adoing to 
elevate the standard of wise and temperate manhood in the 
country, and to diffuse the means of physical and moral 
wellbeing among all the people.' — ' I will write to my 
Father as soon as I can after reaching the capital of his 
friend the Pope, — who, if he had happened to be born an 
English gentleman, would no doubt by this time be a 
respectable old-gentlemanly gouty member of the Carlton. 
I have often amused myself by thinking what a mere acci- 
dent it is that Phillpotts is not Archbishop of Tuam, and 
M'Hale Bishop of Exeter ; and how slight a change of 
dress, and of a few catchwords, would even now enable 
them to fill those respective posts with all the propriety and 
discretion they display in their present positions.' 

At Rome he found the Crawfords, known to him long 
since ; and at different dates other English friends old and 
new : and was altogether in the liveliest humor, no end to 
his activities and speculations. Of all which, during the 
next four months, the Letters now before me give abundant 
record, — far too abundant for our objects here. His grand 
pursuit, as natural at Rome, was Art ; into which metaphy- 
sical domain we shall not follow him ; preferring to pick 
out, here and there, something of concrete and human. Of 
his interests, researches, speculations and descriptions on 
this subject of Art, there is always rather a superabundance, 
especially in the Italian Tour. Unfortunately, in the hard 
weather, poor Calvert fell ill ; and Sterling, along with his 



ITALY, 225 

Art-studies, distinguished himself as a sick-nurse till his 
poor comrade got afoot again. His general impressions of 
the scene and -what it held for him may be read in the 
following excerpts. The Letters are all dated Rome, and 
addressed to his Father or Mother : 

December 21st, 1838.—' Of Rome itself, as a whole, 
there are infinite things to be said, well worth saying ; but 
I shall confine myself to two remarks : first, that while the 
Monuments and works of Art gain in wondrousness and 
significance by familiarity with them, the actual life of 
Rome, the Papacy and its pride, lose ; and though one gets 
accustomed to Cardinals and Friars and Swiss guards, and 
ragged beggars and the finery of London and Paris, all 
rolling on together, and sees how it is that they subsist in a 
sort of spurious unity, one loses all tendency to idealize the 
Metropolis and System of the Hierarchy into any thing 
higher than a piece of showy stage-declamation, at bottom, 
in our day, thoroughly mean and prosaic. My other 
remark is, that Rome, seen from the tower of the Capitol, 
from the Pincian or the Janiculum, is at this day one of 
the most beautiful spectacles which eyes ever beheld. The 
company of great domes rising from a mass of large and 
solid buildings, with a few stone-pines and scattered edifices 
on the outskirts ; the broken ba^e Campagna all around ; 
the Alban Hills not far, and the purple range of Sabine 
Mountains in the distance with a cope of snow ; — this seen 
in the clear air, and the whole spiritualized by endless 
recollections, and a sense of the grave and lofty reality of 
human existence which has had this place for a main 
theatre, fills at once the eyes and heart more forcibly, and 
to me delightfully, than I can find words to say.' 



226 JOHN STERLING. 

January 22t?, 1839. — ' The Modern Rome, Pope and 
all inclusive, are a shabby attempt at something adequate 
to fill the place of the old Commonwealth. It is easy 
enough to live among them, and there is much to amuse 
and even interest a spectator ; but the native existence of 
the place is now thin and hollow, and there is a stamp of 
littleness, and childish poverty of taste, upon all the great 
Christian buildings I have seen here, — not excepting St. 
Peter's ; which is crammed with bits of colored marble and 
gilding, and Gog-and-Magog colossal statues of saints (look- 
ing prodigiously small), and mosaics from the worst pic- 
tures in Rome ; and has altogether, with most imposing 
size and lavish splendor, a tang of Guildhall finery about it 
that contrasts oddly with the melancholy vastness and sim- 
plicity of the Ancient Monuments, though these have not 
the Athenian elegance. I recur perpetually to the galle- 
ries of Sculpture in the Vatican, and to the Frescoes of 
Raffael and Michael Angelo, of inexhaustible beauty and 
greatness, and the general aspect of the City and the 
Country round it, as the most impressive scene on earth* 
But the Modern City, with its churches, palaces, priests 
and beggars, is far from sublime.' 

Of about the same date, here is another paragraph 
worth inserting : ' Gladstone has three little agate crosses 
which he will give you for my little girls. Calvert bought 
them, as a present for " the bodies," at Martigny in Swit- 
zerland, and I have had no earlier opportunity of sending 
them. Will you despatch them to Hastings when j'ou 
have an opportunity ? I have not yet seen Gladstone's 
Qlmrcli and State ; but as there is a copy in Rome, I hope 
soon to lay hands on it. I saw yesterday in the Times a 



ITALY. 227 

furious, and I am sorry to say, most absurd attack on him 
and it, and the new Oxonian school.' 

February 28th, 1839. — ' There is among the people 
plenty of squalid misery ; though not nearly so much as, 
they say, exists in Ireland ; and here there is a certain 
freedom and freshness of manners, a dash of Southern 
enjoyment in the condition of the meanest and most miser- 
able. There is, I suppose, as little as well can be of con- 
science or artificial cultivation of any kind ; but there is 
not the affectation of a virtue which they do not possess, 
nor any feeling of being despised for want of it ; and where 
life generally is so inert, except as to its passions and 
material wants, there is not the bitter consciousness of 
having been beaten by the more prosperous, in a race 
which the greater number have never thought of running. 
Among the laboring poor of Rome, a bribe will buy a 
crime ; but if common work procures enough for a day's 
food or idleness, ten times the sum will not induce them to 
toil on, as an English workman would, for the sake of rising 
in the world. Sixpence any day will put any of them at 
the top of the only tree they care for, — that on which 
grows the fruit of idleness. It is striking to see the way in 
which, in magnificent churches, the most ragged beggars 
kneel on the pavement before some favorite altar in the 
midst of well-dressed women and of gazing foreigners. Or 
sometimes you will see one with a child come in from the 
street where she has been begging, put herself in a corner, 
say a prayer (probably for the success of her petitions), 
and then return to beg again. There is wonderfully little 
of any moral strength connected with this devotion ; but 
still it is better than nothing, and more than is often found 



228 JOHN STERLING. 

among the men of the upper classes in Rome. I believe 
the Clergy to be generally profligate, and the state of 
domestic morals as bad as it has ever been represented.' 

Or, in sudden contrast, take this other glance home- 
ward ; a Letter to his eldest child ; in -which kind of 
Letters, more than in any other, Sterling seems to me to 
excel. Readers recollect the hurricane in St, Vincent ; 
the hasty removal to a neighbor's house, and the birth of a 
son there, soon after. The boy has grown to some articu- 
lation, during these seven years ; and his Father, from the 
new foreign scene of Priests and Dilettanti, thus addresses 
him : 

' To Blaster Edward C. Sterling, Hastings. 

' Eome, January 21st, 1839. 

' My dear Edward, — I was very glad to receive your 
Letter, which shewed m3 that you have 1 earned ething 
since I left home. If you knew how much pleasure it gave 
me to see your handwriting, I am sure you would take 
pains to be able to write well, that you might often send me 
letters, and tell me a great many things which I should 
like to know about Mamma and your Sisters as well as 
yourself. 

' If I go to Vesuvius, I will try to carry away a bit of 
the lava, which you wish for. There has lately been a 
great eruption, as it is called, of that Mountain ; which 
means a great breaking out of hot ashes and fire, and of 
melted stones which is called lava. 

' Miss Clark is very kind to take so much pains with 
you ; and I trust you will shew that you are obliged to her, 
by paying attention to all she tells you. When you see 



ITALY. 229 

how much more grown people know than you, you ought to 
be anxious to learn all you can from those who teach you ; 
and as there are so many wise and good things written in 
Books, you ought to try to read early and carefully, that 
you may learn something of what God has made you able 
to know. There are Libraries containing very many 
thousands of Volumes ; and all that is written in these is, — 
accounts of some part or other of the World which God 
has made, or of the Thoughts which he has enabled men to 
have in their minds. Some Books are descriptions of the 
earth itself, with its rocks and ground and water, and of^ 
the air and clouds, and the stars and moon and sun, which 
shine so beautifully in the sky. Some tell you about the 
things that grow upon the ground ; the many millions of 
plants, from little mosses and threads of grass up to great 
trees and forests. Some also contain accounts of living 
things ; flies, worms, fishes, birds and four-legged beasts. 
And some, which are the most, are about men and their 
thoughts and doings. These are the most important of all ; 
for men are the best and most wonderful creatures of God 
in the world ; being the only ones able to know him and 
love him, and to try of their own accord to do his will. 

' These Books about men are also the most important to 
us, because we ourselves are human beings, and may learn 
from such' Books what we ought to think and to do and to 
try to be. Some of them describe what sort of people 
have lived in old times and in other countries. By reading 
them, we know what is the difference between ourselves in 
England now, and the famous Nations which lived in 
former days. Such were the Egyptians who built the 
•Pyramids, which are the greatest heaps of stone upon the 
20 



230 JOHN STERLING. 

face of the earth: and the Babylonians, who had a city 
with huge walls, built of bricks, having writing on them 
that no one in our time has been able to make out. There 
were also the Jews, who were the only ancient people that 
knew how wonderful and how good God is : and the 
Greeks, who were the wisest of all in thinking about men's 
lives and hearts, and who knew best how to make fine 
statues and buildings, and to write wise books. By Books 
also we may learn what sort of people the old Romans 
were, whose chief city was Rome, where I am now ; and 
how brave and skillful they were in war ; and how well 
they could govern and teach many nations which they had 
conquered. It is from Books, too, that you must learn 
what kind of men were our Ancestors in the Northern 
part of Europe, who belonged to the tribes that did the 
most towards pulling down the power of the Romans : and 
you will see in the same way how Christianity was sent 
among them by God, to make them wiser and more peace- 
ful, and more noble in their minds ; and how all the nations 
that now are in Europe, and especially the Italians and the 
Germans, and the French and the English, came to be 
what they now are. — It is well worth knowing (and it can 
be known only by reading) how the Germans found out the 
Printing of Books, and what great changes this has made 
in the world. And everybody in England ought to try to 
understand how the English came to have their Parlia- 
ments and Laws ; and to have fleets that sail over all seas 
of the world. 

' Besides learning all these things, and a great many 
more about different times and countries, you may learn 
from Books, what is the truth of God's will, and what are 



ITALY. 231 

the best and wisest thoughts, and the most beautiful words ; 
and how men are able to lead very right lives, and to do a 
great deal to better the world. I have spent a great part 
of my life in reading ; and I hope you will come to like it 
as much as I do, and to learn in this way all that I know. 

' But it is a still more serious matter that you should try 
to be obedient and gentle ; and to command your temper ; 
and to think of other people's pleasure rather than your 
own, and of what you ougJit to do rather than what you 
like. If you try to be better for all you read, as well as 
wiser, you will find Books a great help towards goodness as 
well as knowledge, — and above all other Books, the Bible ; 
which tells us of the will of God, and of the love of Jesus 
Christ towards God and men. 

' I had a Letter from Mamma to-day, which left Hast- 
ings on the 10th of this month. I was very glad to find in 
it that you were all well and happy : but I know Mamma is 
not well, — and is likely to be more uncomfortable every 
day for some time. So I hope you will all take care to 
give her as little trouble as possible. After sending you so 
much advice, I shall write a little Story to divert you. — 
I am, my dear Boy, — 

* Your affectionate Father, 

' John Sterling.' 

The ' Story ' is lost, destroyed, as are many such which 
Sterling wrote, with great felicity, I am told, and much to 
the satisfaction of the young folk, when the humor took 
him. 

Besides these plentiful communications still left, I re- 



232 JOHN STERLING. 

member long Letters, not now extant, principally addressed 
to his Wife, of whicli we and the circle at Knightsbridge 
had due perusal, treating with animated copiousness about 
all manner of picture-galleries, pictures, statues and objects 
of Art at Rome, and on the road to Rome and from it, 
wheresoever his course led him into neighborhood of such 
objects. That was Sterling's habit. It is expected in this 
Nineteenth Century that a man of culture shall understand 
and worship Art : among the windy gospels addressed to 
our poor Century there are few louder than this of Art ; — 
and if the Century expects that every man shall do his 
duty, surely Sterling was not the man to balk it ! Various 
extracts from these picture-surveys are given in Hare ; the 
others, I suppose. Sterling himself subsequently destroyed, 
not valuing them much. 

Certainly no stranger could address himself more eagerly 
to reap what artistic harvest Rome offers, which is reck- 
oned the peculiar produce of Rome among cities under the 
sun ; to all galleries, churches, sistine chapels, ruins, coli- 
seums, and artistic or dilettante shrines he zealously pil- 
grimed ; and had much to say then and afterwards, and 
with real technical and historical knowledge I believe, 
about the objects of devotion there. But it often struck 
me as a question, Whether all this even to himself was not, 
more or less, a nebulous kind of element ; prescribed not 
by Nature and her verities, but by the Century expecting 
every man to do his duty ? Whether not perhaps, in good 
part, temporary dilettante cloudland of our poor Century ; 
— or can it be the real diviner Pisgah height, and ever- 
lasting mount of vision, for man's soul in any Century ? 
And I think Sterling himself bent towards a negative con- 



ITALY. 233 

elusion, in the course of years. Certainly, of all subjects 
this was the one I cared least to hear even Sterling talk 
of: indeed it is a subject on which earnest men, abhorrent 
of hypocrisy and speech that has no meaning, are admon- 
ished to silence in this sad time, and had better, in such a 
Babel as we have got into for the present, ' perambulate 
their picture-gallery with little or no speech.' 

Here is another and to me much more earnest kind of 
' Art,' which renders Rome unique among the cities of the 
world ; of this we will, in preference, take a glance through 
Sterling's eyes : 

January 22d, 1839. — ' On Friday last there was a great 
Festival at St. Peter's ; the only one I have seen. The 
church was decorated with crimson hangings, and the choir 
fitted up with seats and galleries, and a throne for the 
Pope. There were perhaps a couple of hundred guards 
of different kinds ; and three or four hundred English 
ladies, and not so many foreign male spectators ; so that 
the place looked empty. The Cardinals in scarlet, and 
Monsignori in purple, were there ; and a body of ofl&cating 
Clergy. The Pope was carried-in in his chair on men's 
shoulders, wearing the Triple Crown ; which I have thus 
actually seen : it is something like a gigantic Egg, and of 
the same color, with three little bands of gold, — very large 
Egg shell with three streaks of the yolk smeared round it. 
He was dressed in white silk robes, with gold trimmings. 

' It was a fine piece of state-show ; though, as there are 
three or four such Festivals yearly, of course there is none 
of the eager interest which broke out at coronations and 
similar rare events ; no explosion of unwonted velvets, 
jewels, carriages, and footmen, such as London and Milan 
20* • 



234 JOHN STERLING. 

have lately enjoyed. I guessed all tli6 people in St. 
Peter's, including performers and spectators, at 2000 ; 
where 20,000 would hardly have been a crushing crowd. 
Mass was performed, and a stupid but short Latin sermon 
delivered by a lad, in honor of St. Peter, who would have 
been much astonished if he could have heard it. The 
genuflexions, and trainbearings, and folding-up the tails of 
silk petticoats while the Pontiff knelt, and the train of Car- 
dinals going up to kiss his Ring, and so forth, — made on 
me the impression of something immeasurably old and 
sepulchral, such as might suit the Grand Lama's court, or 
the inside of an Egyptian Pyramid ; or as if the Hiero- 
glyphics on one of the Obelisks here should begin to pace 
and gesticulate, and nod their bestial heads upon the gran- 
ite tablets. The careless bystanders, the London ladies 
with their eye-glasses and look of an Opera-box, the yawn- 
ing young gentlemen of the Guarda JVobile, and the laugh 
of one of the file of vermillion Priests round the steps of 
the altar at the whispered good thing of his neighbor, 
brought one back to nothing indeed of a very lofty kind, 
but still to the Nineteenth Century.' — 

' At the great Benediction of the City and the World on 
Easter Sunday by the Pope,' he writes afterwards, ' there 
was a large crowd both native and foreign, hundreds of 
carriages, and thousands of the lower orders of people from 
the country ; but even of the poor hardly one in twenty 
took off his hat, and a still smaller number knelt down. A 
few years ago, not a head was covered, nor was there a 
knee which did not bow.' — A very decadent " Hohness of 
our Lord the Pope," it would appear ! — 

Sterling's view of the Pope, as seen in these his gala 



ITALY. 235 

days, doing his big playactorism under God's earnest sky, 
was much more substantial to me than his studies in the 
picture-galleries. To Mr. Hare also he writes : ' I have 
seen the Pope in all his pomp at St. Peter's ; and he looked 
to me a mere lie in livery. The Romish Controversy is 
doubtless a much more diiScult one than the managers of 
the Religious-Tract Society fancy, because it is a theoreti- 
cal dispute ; and in dealing with notions and authorities, I 
can quite understand how a mere student in a library, with 
no eye for facts, should take either one side or other. But 
how ajiy man with clear head and honest heart, and capa- 
ble of seeing realities, and distinguishing them from scenic 
falsehoods, should, after living in a Romanist country, and 
especially at Rome, be inclined to side with Leo against 
Luther, I cannot understand.'* 

It is fit surely to recognize with admiring joy any 
glimpse of the Beautiful and the Eternal that is hung out 
for us, in color, in form or tone, in canvass, stone, or 
atmospheric air, and made accessible by any sense, in this 
world : but it is greatly fitter still (little as we are used 
that way) to shudder in pity and abhorrence over the 
scandalous tragedy, transcendent nadir of human ugliness 
and contemptibility, which under the daring title of relig- 
ious worship, and practical recognition of the Highest God, 
daily and hourly everywhere transacts itself there. And, 
alas, not there only, but elsewhere, everywhere more or 
less ; whereby our sense is so blunted to it ; — whence, in 
all provinces of human life, these tears ! — 

But let us take a glance at the Carnival, since we are 

* Hare, p. cxviii. 



236 JOHN STERLING. 

here. The Letters, as before, are addressed to Knights- 
bridge ; the date Home : 

Fehruary bth, 1839. — ' The Carnival began yesterday. 
It is a curious example of the trifling things which vi'iW 
heartily amuse tens of thousands of grown people, precisely 
because they are trifling, and therefore a relief from serious 
business, cares and labors. The Corso is a street about a 
mile long, and about as broad as Jermyn Street ; but bor- 
dered by much loftier houses, with many palaces and 
churches, and has two or three small squares opening into 
it. Carriages, mostly open, drove up and down it for two 
or three hours ; and the contents were shot at with hand- 
fuls of comfits from the window, — in the hope of making 
them as non-content as possible, — while they returned the 
fire to the best of their inferior abiUty. The populace, 
among whom was I, walked about ; perhaps one in fifty were 
masked in character ; but there was little in the masque- 
rade either of splendor of costume or liveliness of mimicry. 
However, the whole scene was very gay : there were a 
good many troops about, and some of them heavy dragoons, 
who flourished their swords with the magnanimity of our 
Life-Guards, to repel the encroachments of too ambitious 
little boys. Most of the windows and balconies were hung 
with colored drapery ; and there were flags, trumpets, 
nosegays and flirtations of all shapes and sizes. The best 
of all was, that there was laughter enough to have fright- 
ened Cassius out of his thin carcass, could the lean old 
homicide have been present, otherwise than as a fleshless 
ghost ; — in which capacity I thought I had a glimpse of 
him looking over the shoulder of a parti-colored clown, in a 
carriage full of London Cockneys driving towards the 



ITALY. 237 

Capitol. This good-humored foolery will go on for several 
days to come, ending always with the celebrated Horse- 
race, of horses without riders. The long street is cleared 
in the centre by troops, and half-a-dozen quadrupeds, orna- 
mented like Grimaldi in a London pantomime, scamper 
away, with the mob closing and roaring at their heels.' 

February 9th, 1839. — ' The usual state of Rome is quiet 
and sober. One could almost fancy the actual generation 
held their breath, and stole by on tiptoe, in presence of so 
memorable a past. But during the Carnival all mankind, 
womankind and childkind think it unbecoming not to play 
the fool. The modern donkey pokes its head out of the 
lion's skin of old Rome, and brays out the absurdest of 
asinine roundelays. Conceive twenty thousand grown peo- 
ple in a long street, at the windows, on the footways and in 
carriages, amused day after day for several hours in pelting 
and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums ; 
and this no name or pretence, but real downright showers 
of plaster comfits, from which people guard their eyes with 
meshes of wire. As sure as a carriage passes under a win- 
dow or balcony where are acquaintances of theirs, down 
comes a shower of hail, ineffectually returned from below. 
The parties in two crossing carriages similarly assault each 
other ; and there are long balconies hung the whole way 
with a deep canvass pocket full of this mortal shot. One 
Russian Grand Duke goes with a troop of youngsters in a 
wagon, all dressed in brown linen frocks and masked, and 
pelts among the most furious, also being pelted. The 
children are of course pre-eminently vigorous, and there is 
a considerable circulation of real sugar-plums, which supply 
consolation for all disappointments.' 



238 JOHN STERLING. 

The whole to conclude, as is proper, •with a display, -with 
two displays, of fire-works ; in -which art, as in some others, 
Rome is unrivaled : 

February 9th, 1839. — ' It seems to be the ambition of 
all the lower classes to wear a mask and showj grotesque 
disguise of some kind ; and I believe many of the upper 
ranks do the same. They even put St. Peter's into mas- 
querade ; and make it a Cathedral of Lamplight instead of 
a stone one. Two evenings ago this feat was performed ; 
and I was able to see it from the rooms of a friend near 
this, which command an excellent view of it. I never saw 
so beautiful an eifect of artificial light. The evening was 
perfectly serene and clear ; the principal lines of the build- 
ing, the columns, architrave and pediment of the front, the 
two inferior cupolas, the curves of the dome from which the 
dome rises, the ribs of the dome itself, the small oriel win- 
dows between them, and the lantern and ball and cross, — 
all were delineated in the clear vault of air by lines of pale 
yellow fire. The dome of another great Church, much 
nearer to the eye, stood up as a great black mass, — a fune- 
real contrast to the luminous tabernacle. 

' While I was looking at this latter, a red blaze burst 
from the summit, and at the same moment seemed to flash 
over the whole building, filling up the pale outline with a 
simultaneous burst of fire. This is a celebrated display ; 
and is done, I believe, by the employment of a very great 
number of men to light, at the same instant, the torches 
which are fixed for the purpose all over the building. 
After the first glare of fire, I did not think the second 
aspect of the building so beautiful as the first ; it wanted 



ITALY. 239 

both softness and distinctness. The two most animated 
dajs of the Carnival are still to come.' 

A^/ril 4th, 1839. — ' We have just come to the termina- 
tion of all the Easter spectacles here. On Sunday evening 
St. Peter's was a second time illuminated ; I was in the 
Piazza, and admired the sight from a nearer point than 
when I had seen it before at the time of the Carnival. 

' On Monday evening the celebrated fire-works were let 
off from the Castle of St. Angelo ; they were said to be, in 
some respects, more brilliant than usual. I certainly never 
-saw any fire-works comparable to them for beauty. The 
Girandola is a discharge of many thousands of rockets at 
once, which of course fall back, like the leaves of a lily, 
and form for a minute a very beautiful picture. There 
was also in silvery light a very long Facade of a Palace, 
which looked a residence for Oberon and Titania, and beat 
Aladdin's into darkness. Afterwards a series of cascades 
of red fire poured down the faces of the Castle and of the 
scaffoldings round it, and seemed a burning Niagara. Of 
course there were abundance of serpents, wheels and can- 
non-shot ; there was also a display of dazzling white light, 
which made a strange appearance on the houses, the river, 
the bridge, and the faces of the multitude. The Avhole 
ended with a second and a more splendid Girandola.' 

Take finally, to people the scene a little for us, if our 
imagination be at all lively, these three small entries, of 
different dates ; and so wind up : 

December SOth, 1838. — ' I received on Christmas-day a 
packet from Dr. Carlyle, containing Letters from the Mau- 
rices ; which were a very pleasant arrival. The Dr. wrote 



240 JOHN STERLING. 

a few lines with them, mentioning that he was only at 
Civita Vecchia while the steamer baited on its way to 
Naples. I have written to thank him for his despatches.' 

March IQih, 1839. — ' I have seen a good deal of John 
Mill, whose society I like much. He enters heartily into 
the interest of the things which I most care for here, and I 
have seldom had more pleasure than in taking him to see 
Raflfael's Loggie, where are the Frescoes called his Bible, 
and to the Sixtine Chapel, which I admire and love more 
and more. He is in very weak health, but as fresh and 
clear in mind as possible.' * * * <■ English politics seem in 
a queer state, the Conservatives creep on, the Whigs losing 
ground ; hke combatants on the top of a breach, while there 
is a social mine below which will probably blow both parties 
into the air.' 

April Atli, 1839. — ' I walked out on Tuesday on the 
Ancona Road, and about noon met a traveling carriage, 
which from a distance looked very suspicious, and on 
nearer approach was found really to contain Captain Ster- 
ling and an Albanian man-servant on the front, and behind 
under the hood Mrs. A. Sterling and the she portion of the 
tail. They seemed very well ; and, having turned the 
Albanian back to the rear of the whole machine, I sat by 
Anthony, and entered Rome in triumph.' — Here is indeed 
a conquest ! Captain A. Sterling, now on his return from 
service in Corfu, meets his Brother in this manner ; and 
the remaining Roman days are of a brighter complexion. 
As these suddenly ended, I believe he turned southward, 
and found at Naples the Dr. Carlyle above mentioned (an 
extremely intimate acquaintance of mine), who was still 
there. For we are a most traveling people, we of this 



ITALY. 



241 



IsLand in this time ; and, as the Prophet threatened, see 
ourselves, in so many senses, made ' like unto a wheel ! ' 

Sterling returned from Italy filled with much cheerful 
imagery and reminiscence, and great store of artistic, seri- 
ous, dilettant^and other speculation for the time ; improved 
in health, too ; but probably little enriched in real culture 
or spiritual strength ; and indeed not permanently altered 
by his tour in any respect to a sensible extent, that one 
could notice. He returned rather in haste, and before the 
expected time ; summoned, about the middle of April, by 
his Wife's domestic situation at Hastings ; who, poor lady, 
had been brought to bed before her calculation, and had in 
few days lost her infant ; and now saw a household round 
her much needing the master's presence. He hurried off 
to Malta, dreading the Alps at that season ; and came 
home, by steamer, with all speed, early in May 1839. 



21 



242 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CLIFTON. 

Matters once readjusted at Hastings, it was thought Ster- 
ling's health had so improved, and his activities towards 
Literature so developed themselves into congruitj, that a 
permanent English place of abode might now again be 
selected, — on the South-west coast somewhere, — and the 
family once more have the blessing of a home, and see its 
lai'es and penates and household furniture unlocked from 
the Pantechnicon repositories, where they had so long been 
lying. 

Clifton, by Bristol, with its soft Southern winds and high 
cheerful situation, recommended too by the presence of one 
or more valuable acquaintances there, was found to be the 
ehgible place ; and thither in this summer of 1839, having 
found a tolerable lodging, with the prospect by and by of 
an agreeable house, he and his removed. This was the 
end of what I call his ' third peregrinity ; ' — or reckoning 
the West Indies one, his fourth. This also is, since Bays- 
water, the fourth time his family has had to shift on his 
account. Bayswater ; then to Bordeaux, to Blackheath 
and Knightsbridge (during the Madeira time), to Hastings 
(Roman time) ; and now to Clifton, not to stay there 
either : a sadly nomadic life to be prescribed to a civilized 
man ! 

At Clifton his habitation was speedily enough set up ; 



CLIFTON; 243 

household conveniences, methods of work, daily promenades 
on foot or horseback, and before long even a circle of 
friends, or of kindly neighborhoods ripening into intimacy, 
■were established round him. In all this no man could be 
more expert or expeditious, in such cases. It was with 
singular facility, in a loving, hoping manner, that he threw 
himself open to the new interests and capabilities of the 
new place ; snatched out of it whatsoever of human or 
material would suit him ; and in brief, in all senses had 
pitched his tent habitation, and grew to look on it as a 
house. It was beautiful too, as well as pathetic. This 
man saw himself reduced to be a dweller in tents, his house 
is but a stone tent ; and he can so kindly accommodate 
himself to that arrangement ; — healthy faculty and diseased 
necessity, nature and habit, and all manner of things pri- 
mary and secondary, original and incidental, conspiring 
now to make it easy for him. With the evils of nomadism, 
he participated to the full in whatever benefits lie in it for 
a man. 

He had friends enough, old and new, at Clifton, whose 
intercourse made the place human for him. Perhaps 
among the most valued of the former sort may be men- 
tioned Mrs. EdAvard Strachey, Widow of the late Indian 
Judge, who now resided here ; a cultivated, graceful, most 
devout and highminded lady ; whom he had known in old 
years, first probably as Charles Buller's Aunt, and whose 
esteem was constant for him, and always precious to him. 
She was some ten or twelve years older than he ; she sur- 
vived him some years, but is now also gone from us. Of 
new friends acquired here, besides a skillful and ingenious 
Dr. Simmons, physician as well as friend, the principal 



244 JOHN STERLING. 

was Francis Newman, then and still an ardently inquiring 
soul, of fine University and other attainments, of sharp- 
cutting restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious 
enthusiasm ; whose worth, since better known to all the 
world. Sterling highly estimated ; — and indeed practically 
testified the same ; having by will appointed him, some 
years hence, guardian to his eldest Son ; which pious func- 
tion Mr. Newman now successfully discharges. 

Sterling was not long in certainty as to his abode at 
Clifton : alas, where could he long be so ? Hardly six 
months were gone when his old enemy again overtook him ; 
again admonished him how frail his hopes of permanency 
were. Each winter, it turned out, he had to fly ; and after 
the second of these, he quitted the place altogether. 
Here, meanwhile, in a Letter to myself, and in Excerpts 
from others, are some glimpses of his advent and first 
summer there : 

Clifton, June llth, 1839 {To Ms 3Iother).^' As yet I 
am personally very uncomfortable from the general confu- 
sion of this house, which deprives me of my room to sit and 
read and write in ; all being more or less lumbered by 
boxes, and invaded by servile domesticities aproned, han- 
dled, bristled, and of nondescript varieties. We have very 
fine warm weather, with occasional showers ; and the ver- 
dure of the woods and fields is very beautiful. Bristol 
seems as busy as need be ; and the shops and all kinds of 
practical conveniences are excellent ; but those of Clifton 
have the usual sentimental, not to say meretricious fraudu- 
lence of commercial establishments in Watering-places. 

' The bag which Hannah forgot reached us safely at 



CLIFIOtN". 245 

Bath on Friday morning ; but I cannot quite unriddle the 
mystery of the change of padlocks, for I left the right one 
in care of the Head Steam-engine at Paddington, which 
seemed a very decent person with a good black coat on, 
and a pen behind its ear. I have been meditating much 
on the story of Palarea's " box of papers ;" which does not 
appear to be in my possession, and I have a strong impres- 
sion that I gave it to young Florez Calderon. I will write 
to say so to Madame Torrijos speedily.' — Palarea, Dr. Pa- 
larea, I understand, was ' an old guerilla leader whom they 
called El Medico.'' Of him and of the vanished shadows, 
now gone to Paris, to Madrid, or out of the world, let us 
say nothing ! 

June 15th, 1839 QTo myself). — ' We have a room now 
occupied by Robert Barton,' a brother-in-law ; ' to which 
Anthony may perhaps succeed ; but which after him, or in 
lieu of him, would expand itself to receive you. Is there 
no hope of your coming ? I would undertake to ride with 
you at all possible paces, and in all existing directions. 

' As yet my books are lying as ghost books, in a limbo 
on the banks of a certain Bristolian Styx, humanly speak- 
ing, a Canal ; but the other apparatus of life is gathered 
about me, and performs its diurnal functions. The place 
pleases me better than I expected : A far look-out on all 
sides, over green country ; a sufficient old City lying in 
the hollow near ; and civilization, in no tumultuous state, 
rather indeed stagnant, visible in the Rows of Houses and 
Gardens which call themselves Clifton. I hope soon to 
take a lease of a house, where I may arrange myself more 
methodically ; keep myself equably boiling in my own 
kitchen ; and spread myself over a series of book-shelves.' 
21^ 



246 JOHN STERLING. 

— ' I have just been interrupted by a visit from Mrs. 
Strachey ; with whom I dined yesterday. She seems a 
very good and thoroughly kind-hearted woman ; and it is 
pleasant to have her for a neighbor.' — ' I have read Em- 
erson's Pamphlets. I should find it more difficult than 
ever to write to him.' 

June 2>0th, 1839 {To Jus Father').—' Of Books I shall 
have no lack, though no plethora ; and the Reading-room 
supplies all one can want in the way of Papers and Re- 
views. I go there three or four times a week, and inquire 
how the human race goes on. I suppose this Turco-Egyp- 
tian War will throw several diplomatists into a state of great 
excitement, and massacre a good many thousands of Afri- 
cans and Asiatics ? — for the present, it appears, the English 
Education Question is settled. I wish the Government had 
said that, in their inspection and superintendence, they 
would look only to secular matters, and leave religious ones 
to the persons who set up the schools, whoever these might 
be. It seems to me monstrous that the State should be 
prevented taking any efficient measures for teaching Roman 
Catholic children to read, write and cypher, merely be- 
cause they believe in the Pope, and the Pope is an impos- 
tor, — which I candidly confess he is ! There is no question 
which I can so ill endure to see made a party one as that 
of Education.' — The following is of the same day : 

' 2Jo Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Manor House, Clifton Place, Clifton, 
' June 30th, 1639. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have heard, this morning, 
rom my Father, that you are to set out on Tuesday for 



CLIFTON. 247 

Scotland : so I have determined to fillip away some spurt 
of ink in your direction, •which may reach you before you 
move towards Thule. 

' Writing to you, in fact, is considerably easier than 
writing about you ; which has been my employment of 
late, at leisure moments, — that is, moments of leisure from 
idleness, not work. As you partly guessed, I took in hand 
a Review of Teufelsdro cJch — for want of a better Heusch- 
recke to do the work ; and when I have been well enough, 
and alert enough, during the last fortnight, have tried 
to set down some notions about Tobacco, Radicahsm, 
Christianity, Assafoetida and so forth. But a few abortive 
pages are all the result as yet. If my speculations should 
ever see daylight, they may chance to get you into scrapes, 
but will certainly get me into worse.' * * * < gut one 
must work ; sic itur ad astra, — and the astra are always 
there to befriend one, at least as asterisks, filling up the 
gaps which yawn in vain for words. 

' Except my unsuccessful efforts to discuss you and your 
offences, I have done nothing that leaves a trace behind ; — 
unless the endeavor to teach my little boy the Latin de- 
clensions shall be found, at some time short of the Last 
Day, to have done so. I have, — rather I think from dys- 
pepsia than dyspneumony, — been often and for days dis' 
abled from doing any thing but read. In this way I have 
gone through a good deal of Strauss's Book ; which is ex- 
ceedingly clever and clear-headed ; with more of insight, 
and less of destructive rage than I expected. It will work 
deep and far, in such a time as onrs. When so many 
minds are distracted about the history, or rather genesis of 
the Gospel, it is a great thing for partisans on the one side 



248 JOHN STERLING. 

to have, what the other never have wanted, a Book of 
which they can say, This fs our Creed and Code, — or 
rather Anti-creed and Anti-code. And Strauss seems per- 
fectly secure against the sort of answer to which Voltaire's 
critical and historical shallowness perpetually exposed him. 
I mean to read the Book through. It seems admitted that 
the orthodox theologians have failed to give any sufficient 
answer. — I have also looked through Michelet's Luther, 
with great delight ; and have read the fourth volume of 
Coleridge's Literary Remains, in which there are things 
that would interest you. He has a great hankering after 
Cromwell, and explicitly defends the execution of Charles. 

' Of Mrs. Strachey we have see a great deal ; and might 
have seen more, had I had time and spirits for it. She is 
a warmhearted, enthusiastic creature, whom one cannot but 
like. She seems always excited by the wish for more ex- 
citement than her life affords. And such a person is always 
in danger of doing something less wise than his best knowl- 
edge and aspirations ; because he must do something, and 
circumstances do not allow him to do what he desires. — 
Thence after the j&rst glow of novelty, endless self-torment- 
ing comes from the contrast between aims and acts. She 
sets out, with her daughter and two boys, for a Tour in 
Wales tomorrow morning. Her talk of you is always most 
affectionate ; and few, I guess, will read Sartor with more 
interest than she. 

' I am still in a very extempore condition as to house, 
Books, &c. One which I have hired for three years will 
be given up to me in the middle of August ; and then I 
may hope to have something like a house, — so far as that 
is possible for any one to whom Time itself is often but a 



CLIFTON. 249 

worse or a better kind of cave in the desert. We have had 
rainy and cheerless weather ahiaost since the day of our 
arrival. But the sun now shines more lovingly, and the 
skies seem less disdainful of man and his perplexities. The 
earth is green, abundant and beautiful. But human life, 
so far as I can learn, is mean and meagre enough in its 
purposes, however striking to the speculative or sentimen- 
tal bystander. Pray be assured that whatever you may 
say of the " landlord at Clifton,"* the more I know of 
him, the less I shall like him. Well with me if I can put 
up with him for the present, and make use of him, till at 
last I can joyfully turn him oif forever ! 

* Love to your Wife and self. My little Charlotte de- 
sires me to tell y©u that she has new shoes for her Doll, 
which she will shew you when you come. — Yours, 

' John Sterling.' 

The visit to Clifton never took effect; nor to any of 
Sterling's subsequent homes ; which now is matter of 
regret to me. Concerning the ' Review of Teufehdrdckh* 
there will be more to say anon. As to ' little Charlotte 
and her Doll,' I remember well enough and was more than 
once reminded, this bright little creature, on one of my 
first visits to Bayswater, had earnestly applied to me to 
put her Doll's shoes on for her ; which feat was performed. 
— The next fragment indicates a household settled, fallen 
into wholesome routine again ; and may close the series 
here : 

Jahj 22d, 1839 (To his 3Iother) .—' A fe\^ evenings 

* Of Sterling himself, I suppose. 



250 JOHN STERLING. 

ago we -went to Mr. Griffin's, and met there Dr. Pricliard, 
the author of a well known Book on the Races of Manldnd, 
to which it stands in the same relation among English books 
as the Racing Calendar does to those of Horsekind. He 
is a very intelligent, accomplished person. "We had also 

there the Dean ; a certain Dr. of Corpus College, 

Cambridge (a booby) ; and a clever fellow, a Mr. Fisher, 
one of the Tutors of Trinity in my days. We had a very 
pleasant evening.' — 

At London we were in the habit of expecting Sterling 
pretty often : his presence, in this house as in others, was 
looked for, once in the month or two, and came always as 
sunshine in the gray weather to me and Tuine. My daily 
walks with him had long since been cut short without re- 
newal ; that walk to Eltham and Edgeworth's perhaps the 
last of the kind he and I had : but our intimacy, deepen- 
ing and widening year; after year, knew no interruption or 
abatement of increasi^ ; an honest, frank and truly human 
mutual relation, valuable or even invaluable to both parties , 
and a lasting loss, hardly to be replaced in this world, to 
the survivor of the two. 

His visits, which were usually of two or three days, 
were always full of business, rapid in movement as all his 
life was. To me, if possible, he would come in the even- 
ing ; a whole cornucopia of talk and speculation was to be 
discharged. If the evening would not do, and my affairs 
otherwise permitted, I had to mount into cabs with him ; 
fly far and wide, shuttling athwart the big Babel, where- 
ever his calls and pauses had to be. This was his way to 
husband time ! Our talk, in such straitened circum- 



CLIFTON. 251 

stances, was loud or low as the circumambient groaning 
rage of wheels and sound prescribed, — very loud it had to 
be in such thoroughfares as London Bridge and Cheapside ; 
but except while he was absent, off for minutes into some 
banker's office, lawyer's, stationer's, haberdasher's or what 
office there might be, it never paused. In this way exten- 
sive strange dialogues were carried on : to me also very 
strange, — private friendly colloquies, on all manner of rich 
subjects, held thus amid the chaotic roar of things. Ster- 
ling was full of speculations, observations and bright sallies; 
vividly awake to what was passing in the world ; glanced 
pertinently with victorious clearness, without spleen, though 
often enough with a dash of mockery, into its Puseyisms, 
Liberalisms, literary Lionisms, or what else the mad hour 
might be producing, — always prompt to recognize what 
grain of sanity might be in the same. He was opulent in 
talk, and the rapid movement and vicissitude on such occa- 
sions seemed to give him new excitement. 

Once, I still remember, — it was some years before, 
probably in May, on his return from Madeira, — he under- 
took a day's riding with me ; once and never again. We 
coursed extensively over the Hampstead and Highgate 
regions, and the country beyond, sauntering or galloping 
through many leafy lanes and pleasant places, in overflow- 
ing, ever-changing talk ; and returned down Regent street 
at nightfall : one of the cheerfullest days I ever had ; — 
not to be repeated, said the Eates. Sterling was charming 
on such occasions : at once a child and a gifted man. A 
serious fund of thought he always had, a serious drift you 
never missed in him : nor indeed had he much depth of 
real laughter or sense of the ludicrous, as I have elsewhere 



252 JOHN STERLING. 

said ; but what he had was genuine, free and continual : his 
sparkling sallies bubbled up as from aerated natural foun- 
tains ; a mild dash of gajety was native to the man, and 
had moulded his physiognomy in a very graceful way. We 
got once into a cab, about Charing Cross ; I know not now 
whence or well whitherward, nor that our haste was at all 
special ; however, the cabman, sensible that his pace was 
slowish, took to whipping, with a steady, passionless, busi- 
ness-like assiduity which, though the horse seemed lazy 
rather than weak, became afflictive ; and I urged remon- 
strance with the savage fellow: " Let him alone," answered 
Sterling ; " he is kindling the enthusiasm of his horse, you 
perceive ; that is the first thing, then we shall do very 
well ! " — as accordingly we did. 

At Clifton, though his thoughts began to turn more on 
poetic forms of composition, he was diligent in prose elabo- 
rations too, — doing Criticism, for one thing, as we incident- 
ally observed. He wrote there, and sent forth in this 
autumn of 1839, his most important contribution to John 
Mill's Review, the Article on Carlyle, which stands also in 
Mr. Hare's collection.* What its effect on the public was I 
knew not, and know not ; but remember well, and may 
here bo permitted to acknowledge, the deep silent joy, not 
of a weak or ignoble nature, which it gave to myself in my 
then mood and situation ; as it well might. The first gen- 
erous human recognition, expressed with heroic emphasis, 
and clear conviction visible amid its fiery exaggeration, that 
one's poor battle in this world is not quite a mad and futile, 

* Hare, i. p. 252. 



CLIFTON. 253 

that it is perhaps a worthy and manful one, which will ^ 
come to something yet : this fact is a memorable one in 
every history ; and for me Sterling, often enough the stiff 
gainsayer in our private communings, was the doer of this. 
The thought burnt in me like a lamp, for several days ; 
lighting up into a kind of heroic splendor the sad volcanic 
wrecks, abysses and convulsions of said poor battle; and 
secretly I was very grateful to my daring friend, and am 
still, and ought to be. What the public might be thinking 
about him and his audacities, and me in consequence, or 
whether it thought at all, I never learned, or much heeded 
to learn. 

Sterling's gainsaying had given way on many points ; but 
on others it continued stiff as ever, as may be seen in that 
Article ; indeed he fought Parthian-like in such cases, 
holding out his last position as doggedly as the first ; and 
to some of my notions he seemed to grow in stubbornness 
of opposition, with the growing inevitability, and never 
would surrender. Especially that doctrine of the ' great- 
ness and fruitfulness of Silence,' remained afflictive and 
incomprehensible : " Silence ? " he would say : " Yes, 
truly ; if they give you leave to proclaim silence by cannon 
salvoes! My Harpocrates-Stentor I " In likie manner, 
' Intellect and Virtue,' how they are proportional, or are 
indeed one gift in us, the same great summary of gifts ; 
and again, ' Might and Right,' the identity of these two, 
if a man will understand this God's-Universe, and that only 
he who conforms to the law of it can in the longrun have 
any ' might : ' all this, at the first blush, often awakened 
Sterling's musketry upon me, and many volleys I have had 
to stand, — the thing not being decidable by that kind of 
weapon or strategy. 
22 



254 JOHN STERLING. 

In such cases your one method was to leave our friend 
in peace. By small-arms practice no mortal could dislodge 
him ; but if you "were in the right, the silent hours would 
work continually for you ; and Sterling, more certainly 
than any man, would and must at length swear fealty to 
the right, and passionately adopt it. burying all hostilities 
under foot. A more candid soul, once let the stormful 
velocities of it expend themselves, was nowhere to be met 
with. A son of light, if I have ever seen one ; recognizing 
the truth, if truth there were ; hurling overboard his vani- 
ties, petulances, big and small interests, in ready loyalty to 
truth ; very beautiful ; at once a loyal child, as I said, and 
a gifted man ! — Here is a very pertinent passage from one 
of his Letters, which, though the name continues blank, I 
will insert : 

Octoher 15th, 1839 (To his Father').—' As to my 

" over-estimate of ," your expressions rather puzzle 

me. I suppose there may be, at the outside, a hundred 
persons in England whose opinions on such a matter are 
worth as much as mine. If by " the public," you and my 
Mother mean the other ninety-nine, I submit. I have no 
doubt that, on any matter not relating peculiarly to myself, 
the judgment of the ninety-nine most philosophical heads in 
the country, if unanimous, would be right, and mine, if 
opposed to them, wrong. But then I am at a loss to make 
out, How the decision of the very few really competent 
persons has been ascertained to be thus in contradiction to 
me ? And on the other hand, I conceive myself, from my 
opportunities, knowledge and attention to the subject, to be 
alone quite entitled to outvote tens of thousands of gentle- 
men, however much my superiors as men of business, men 



CLIFTON. . 255 

of the world, or men of merely dry or merely frivolous 
literature. 

' I do not remember ever before to have heard the say- 
ing, whether of Talleyrand or of any one else, That all the 
world is a wiser man than any man in the world. Had it 
been said even by the Devil, it would nevertheless be false. 
I have often indeed heard the saying. On peut etre 2^lus 
FIN quhm autre, mais ims plus fin que tous les autres. 
.But observe that " Jin " means cunning, not zvise. The 
difference between this assertion and the one you refer to 
is curious, and worth examining. It is quite certain, there 
is always some one man in the world wiser than all the 
rest ; as Socrates was declared by the Oracle to be ; and 
as, I suppose, Bacon was in his day, and perhaps l5urke in 
his. There is also some one, whose opinion would be prob- 
ably true, if opposed to that of all around him ; and it is 
always indubitable that the wise men are the scores, and 
the unwise the millions. The millions indeed come round, 
in the course of a generation or two, to the opinions of the 
wise ; but by that time a new race of wise men have again 
shot ahead of their contemporaries : so it has always been, 
and so, in the nature of things, it always must be. But 
with cunning, the matter is quite different. Cunning is 
not dishonest wisdom, which would be a contradiction in 
terms ; it is dishonest prudence, acuteness in practice, not 
in thought ; and though there must always be some one the 
most cunning in the Avorld, as well as some one the most 
wise, these two superlatives will fare very differently in the 
world. In the case of cunning, the shrewdness of a whole 
people, of a whole generation, may doubtless be combined 
against that of the one, and so triumph over it ; which was 



256 JOHN STERLING. 

pretty mucli the case with Napoleon. But although a man 
of the greatest cunning can hardly conceal his designs and 
true character from millions of unfriendly eyes, it is quite 
impossible thus to club the eyes of the mind, and to consti- 
tute by the union of ten thousand follies an equivalent for a 
single wisdom. A hundred school-boys can easily unite 
and thrash their one master ; but a hundred thousand 
school-boys would not be nearer than a score to knowing as 
much Greek among them as Bentley or Scaliger. To all 
which, I believe you will assent as readily as I ; — and I 
have written it down only because I have nothing more im- 
portant to say.' — 

Beside his prose labors, Sterling had by this time writ- 
ten, publishing chiefly in Blackwood, a large assortment of 
verses, Sexton's DaugJite?', Hymns of a Hermit, and I 
know not what other extensive stock of pieces ; concerning 
which he was now somewhat at a loss as to his true course. 
He could write verses with astonishing facility, in any 
given form of metre ; and to various readers they seemed 
excellent, and high judges had freely called them so, but he 
himself had grave misgivings on that latter essential point. 
In fact here once more was a parting of the ways, " Write 
in Poetry ; write in Prose ? " upon which, before all else, 
it much concerned him to come to a settlement. 
' My own advice was, as it had always been, steady 
against Poetry ; and we had colloquies upon it, which must 
have tried his patience, for in him there was a strong lean- 
ing the other way. But, as I remarked and urged : Had 
he not already gained superior excellence in delivering, by 
way of speech or prose, what thoughts were in him, which 



CLIFTON. -257 

is the grand and only intrinsic function of a writing man, 
call him by what title you will ? Cultivate that superior 
excellence till it become a perfect and superlative one. 
Why sing your bits of thoughts, if you can contrive to speak 
them? By your thought, not by your mode of deliver- 
ing it, you must live or die. — ^Besides I had to observe 
there was in Sterling intrinsically no depth of tune ; which 
surely is the real test of a Poet or Singer, as distinguished 
from a Speaker ? In music proper he had not the slight- 
est ear ; all music was mere impertinent noise to him, 
nothing in it perceptible but the mere march or time. Nor 
in his way of conception and utterance, in the verses he 
wrote, was there any contradiction, but a constant confirm- 
ation to me, of that fatal prognostic ; as indeed the whole 
man, in ear and heart and tongue, is one ; and he whose 
soul does not sing, need not try to do it with his throat. 
Stearling's verses had a monotonous rub-a dub, instead of 
tune ; no trace of music deeper than that of a well-beaten 
drum ; to which limited range of excellence the substance 
also corresponded ; being intrinsically always a rhymed and 
slightly rhythmical Sjjeec/i, not a song. 

In short, all seemed to me to say, in his case : " You 
can speak with supreme excellence : sing with considerable 
excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, 
beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech ; an 
Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial man- 
ner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary 
overturnings readjust themselves ? Intelligible word of 
command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in 
this fell storm of battle. " Beyond all ages, our Age admon- 
ishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has : Oh speak 
o2# 



258 - JOHN STERLING. 

to me, some -wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning, 
in the shortest and clearest way ; behold, I am dying for 
want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact : 
speak, if you have any wisdom ! As to song so-called, and 
your fiddling talent, — even if you have one, much more if 
you have none, — we will talk of that a couple of centuries 
hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be 
thrice welcome ; but only when Troy is taken : alas, while 
the siege lasts, and battle's fury rages everywhere, what 
can I do with the Homer ? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, 
and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers ! " — 

Sterling, who respected my sincerity, and always was 
amenable enough to counsel, was doubtless much confused 
by such contradictory diagnosis of his case. The question, 
Poetry or Prose ? became more and more pressing, more 
and more insoluble. He decided, at last, to appeal to the 
public upon it ; — got ready, in the late autumn, a small 
select Volume of his verses ; and was now busy pushing it 
through the press. Unfortunately, in the meanwhile, a 
grave illness, of the old pulmonary sort, overtook him, 
which at one time threatened to be dangerous. This is a 
glance again into his interior household in these circum- 
stances : 

December 21st, 1839, (To his Mother').—' The Tin-box 
came quite safe, with all its miscellaneous contents. I 
suppose we are to thank you for the Comic Almanack, 
which, as usual, is very amusing ; and for the Book on 
Watt, which disappointed me. The scientific part is no 
doubt very good, and particularly clear and simple ; but 
there is nothing remarkable in the account of Watt's char- 
acter, and it is an absurd piece of French impertinence in 



CLIFTON. 259 

Arago to say, that England has not yet learnt to appre- 
ciate men like Watt, because he was not made a peer ; 
which, were our peerage an institution like that of France, 
would have been very proper. 

' I have now finished correcting the proofs of my little 
Volume of Poems. It has been a great plague to me, and 
one that I would not have incurred, had I expected to be 
laid up as I have been ; but the matter was begun before I 
had any notion of being disabled by such an illness, — the 
severest I have suffered since I went to the West Indies. 
The Book will, after all, be a botched business in many 
respects ; and I much doubt whether it will pay its ex- 
penses : but I try to consider it as out of my hands, and 
not to fret myself about it. I shall be very curious too see 
Carlyle's Tractate on Chartism; which' — But we need 
not enter upon that. 

Sterling's little Book was printed at his own expense ; 
published by Moxon in the very end of this year.* It car- 
ries an appropriate and pretty Epigraph : 

' Feeling, Thought and Fancy be 

' Gentle sister Graces three : 
' If these prove averse to me, 

' They will punish,— pardon Ye ! ' 

He had dedicated the little Volume to Mr. Hare ; — and he 
submitted very patiently to the discouraging neglect with 
which it was received by the world : for indeed the ' Ye ' 
said nothing audible, in the way of pardon or other doom ; 
so that whether the ' sister Graces ' were averse or not, 
remained as doubtful as ever. 

* Poems by John Sterling. London (Moxon), 18S9. 



260 JOHN STERLING. 



CHAPTER IX. 



TWO WINTERS. 



As we said above, it had been hoped by SterHng's friends, 
not very confidently by himself, that in the gentler air of 
Clifton his health might so far recover as to enable him to 
dispense with autumnal voyages, and to spend the year all 
round in a house of his own. These hopes, favorable while 
the warm season lasted, broke down when winter came. In 
November of this same year, while his little Volume was 
passing through the press, bad and worse symptoms, spitting 
of blood to crown the sad list, reappeared ; and Sterling 
had to equip himself again, at this late season, for a new 
flight to Madeira ; wherein the good Calvert, himself 
suffering, and ready on all grounds for such an adventure, 
offered to accompany him. Sterling went by land to 
Falmouth, meaning there to wait for Calvert, who was to 
come by the Madeira Packet, and there take him on board. 
Calvert and the Packet did arrive, in stormy January 
weather ; which continued wildly blowing for weeks ; for- 
bidding all egress Westward, especially for invahds. These 
elemental tumults, and blustering Avars of sea and sky, 
with nothing but the misty solitude of Madeira in the 
distance, formed a very discouraging outlook. In the 
meanwhile Falmouth itself had offered so many resources, 
and seemed so tolerable in climate and otherwise, while 



TWO WINTERS. 261 

this wintry ocean looked so inhospitable for invalids, it was 
resolved our voyagers should stay ■where they were till 
spring returned. Which accordingly was done ; with good 
effect for that season, and also with results for the coming 
seasons. Here again, from Letters to Knightsbridge, are 
some glimpses of his winter life : 

Falmouth, February 5t7i, 1840. — ' I have been today to 
see a new tin-mine, two or three miles off, which is expected 
to turn into a copper-mine by and by, so they will have the 
two constituents of bronze close together. This, by the 
way, was the " brass " of Homer and the Ancients gener- 
ally, who do not seem to have known our brass made of 
copper and zinc. Achilles in his armor must have looked 
like a bronze statue. — I took Sheridan's advice, and did 
not go down the mine.' 

February 15th. — ' To some iron-works the other day ; 
where I saw half the beam of a great steam-engine, a piece 
of iron forty feet long and seven broad, cast in about five 
minutes. It was a very striking spectacle. I hope to go 
to Penzance before I leave this country ; and will not fail 
to tell you about it.' — He did make trial of Penzance, 
among other places, next year ; but only of Falmouth this. 

February 20th, — ' I am going on asy here, in spite of a 
great change of weather. The East winds are come at 
last ; bringing with them snow, which has been driving 
about for the last twenty-four hours ; not falling heavily, 
nor lying long when fallen. Neither is it as yet very cold, 
but I suppose there will be some six weeks of unpleasant 
temperature. The marine climate of this part of England 
will, no doubt, modify and mollify the air into a happier 
sort of substance than that you breathe in London. 



262 JOHN STERLING. 

' The large vessels that had been Ijing here for weeks, 
waiting for a wind, have now sailed ; two of them for the 
East Indies, and having three hundred soldiers on board. 
It is a curious thing that the long-continued westerly winds 
had so prevented the coasters arriving, that the Town was 
almost on the point of a famine as to bread. The change 
has brought in abundance of flour. — The people in general 
seem extremely comfortable ; their houses are excellent, 
almost all of stone. Their habits are very little agricul- 
tural, but mining and fishing seem to prosper with them. 
There are hardly any gentry here ; I have not seen more 
than two gentlemen's" carriages in the Town ; indeed I 
think the nearest one comes from five miles oif.' 

' I have been obliged to try to occupy myself with 
Natural Science, in order to give some interest to my 
walks ; and have begun to feel my way in Geology. I 
have now learnt to recognize three or four of the common 
kinds of stone about here, when I see them ; but I find it 
stupid work compared with Poetry and Philosophy. In 
the mornings, however, for an hour or so before I get' up, I 
generally light my candle, and try to write some verses ; 
and since I have been here, I have put together short 
poems, almost enough for another small volume. In the 
evenings I have gone on translating some of Goethe. But 
six or seven hours spent on my legs, in the open air, do not 
leave my brain much energy for thinking. Thus my life is 
a dull and unprofitable one, but still better than it would 
have been in Madeira or on board ship. I hear from Susan 
every day, and write to her by return of post.' 

At Falmouth Sterling had been warmly welcomed by 
the well-known Quaker family of the Foxes, principal 



TWO WINTERS. 263 

people in that place, persons of cultivated opulent habits, 
and joining to the fine purities and pieties of their sect a 
reverence for human intelligence in all kinds { to ^hom 
such a visitor as Sterling was naturally a welcome windfall. 
The family had grave elders, bright cheery younger 
branches, men and women ; truly amiable all, after their 
sort : they made a pleasant image of home for Sterling in 
his winter exile. ' Most worthy, respectable and highly 
cultivated people, with a great deal of money among them,' 
writes Sterling in the end of February ; ' who make the 
place pleasant to me. They are connected with all the 
large Quaker circle, the Gurneys, Frys, &;c., and also with 
Buxton the Abolitionist. It is droll to hear them talking 
of all the common topics of science, literature and life, 
and in the midst of it : " Dost thou know Wordsworth ? " 
or, " Did thou see the Coronation ?" or, " Will thou take 
some refreshment ?" They are very kind and pleasant 
people to know. 

* Calvert,' continues our Diarist, ' is better than he 
lately was, though he has not been at all laid up. He 
shoots little birds, and dissects and stuffs them ; while I 
carry a hammer, and break flints and slates, to look for 
diamonds and rubies inside ; and admire my success in the 
evening, when I empty my greatcoat pocket of its speci- 
mens. On the whole, I doubt whether my physical pro- 
ceedings will set the Thames on fire. Give my love to 
Anthony's Charlotte ; also remember me affectionately to 
the Carlyles.' — 

At this time, too, John Mill, probably encouraged by 
Sterling, arrived in Falmouth, seeking refuge' of climate for 
a sickly younger Brother, to whom also, while he continued 



264 JOHN STERLING. 

there, and to his poor patient, the doors and hearts of this 
kind family were thrown wide open. Falmouth during 
these winter weeks, especially while Mill continued, was an 
unexpectedly engaging place to Sterling ; and he left it in 
spring, for Clifton, with a very kindly image of it in his 
thoughts. So ended, better than it might have done, his 
first year's flight from the Clifton winter. 

In April 1840 he was at his own hearth again ; cheerily 
pursuing his old labors, — struggling to redeem, as he did 
with a gallant constancy, the available months and days, 
out of the wreck of so many that were unavailable, for the 
business allotted him in this world. His swift, decisive 
energy of character ; the valiant rally he made again and 
ever again, starting up fresh from amid the wounded, and 
cheerily storming in anew, was admirable, and shewed a 
noble fund of natural health amid such an element of dis- 
ease. Somehow one could never rightly fancy that he was 
diseased ; that those fatal ever-recurring downbreaks were 
not almost rather the penalities paid for exuberance of 
health, and of faculty for living and working ; criminal 
forfeitures, incurred by excess of self-exertion and such 
irrepressible over-rapidity of movement : and the vague 
hope was habitual Avith us, that increase of years, as it 
deadened this over-energy, would first make the man secure 
of life, and a sober prosperous worker among his fellows. 
It was always as if with a kind of blame that one heard of 
his being ill again ! Poor Sterling : — no man knows anoth- 
er's burden : these things were not, and were not to be, in 
the way we had fancied them ! 



TWO WINTERS. 265 

Summer went along in its usual quiet tenor at Clifton ; 
health good, as usual while the warm weather lasted, and 
activity abundant ; the scene as still as the busiest could 
wish. ' You metropolitan signors,' writes Sterling to his 
Father, ' cannot conceive the dullness and scantiness of 
our provincial chronicle.' Here is a little excursion to the 
seaside ; the lady of the family being again, — for good 
reasons, — in a weakly state : — 

' To Edward Sterling^ Esq., Kniglitshridge, London. 

Portshead, Bristol, Sept. 1st, 1840. 

' My Dear Father, — This place is a southern headland 
at the mouth of the Avon. Susan, and the Children too, 
were all suffering from languor ; and as she is quite unfit 
to travel in a carriage, we were obliged to move, if at all, 
to some place accessible by water ; and this is the nearest 
where we could get the fresher air of the Bristol Channel. 
We sent to take a house, for a week ; and came down here 
in a steamer yesterday morning. It seems likely to do 
every one good. We have a comfortable house, Avith eight 
rather small bedrooms, for which we pay four guineas and 
a half for the week. We have brought three of our own 
maids, and leave one to take care of the house at Clifton. 

' A week ago my horse fell with me, but did not hurt 
seriously either himself or me : it was, however, rather hard 
that, as there were six legs to be damaged, the one that 
did scratch itself should belong to the part of the machine 
possessing only two, instead of the quadrupedal portion. I 
grazed about the size of a halfpenny on my left knee ; and 
for a couple of days, walked about as if nothing had hap- 
23 



266 JOHN STERLING. 

pened. I found, however, that the sldn was not returning 
correctly ; and so sent for a doctor ; he treated the thing 
as quite insignificant, but said I must keep mj leg quiet 
for a few days. It is still not quite healed ; and I lie all 
day on a sofa, much to my discomposure ; but the thing is 
now rapidly disappearing ; and I hope, in a day or two 
more, I shall be free again. I find I can do no work, while 
thus crippled in my leg. The man in Horace who made 
verses stayis pede in uno had the advantage of me. 

' The Great Western came in last night about eleven, 
and has just been making a flourish past our windows ; 
looking very grand, with four streamers of bunting, and one 
of smoke. Of course I do not yet know whether I have 
Letters by her, as if so they will have gone to Clifton first. 
This place is quiet, green and pleasant ; and will suit us 
very well, if we have good weather, of which there seems 
every appearance. 

' Milnes spent last Sunday with me at Clifton ; and was 
very amusing and cordial. It is impossible for those who 
know him well not to like him. — I send this to Knights- 
bridge, not knowing where else to hit you. Love to my 
Mother. — Your affectionate, 

John Sterling.' 

The expected ' Letters by the Great Western' are from 
Anthony, now in Canada, doing military duties there. The 
' Milnes' is our excellent Richard, whom all men know, and 
truly whom none can know well without even doing as 
Sterling says. In a week the family had returned to Clif- 
ton ; and Sterling was at his poetizings and equitations 
again. His grand business was now Poetry; all effort, 



TWO WINTERS. 267 

outlook and aim exclusively directed thither, this good 
while. 

Of the published Volume Moxon gave the worst tidings ; 
no man had hailed it with welcome ; unsold it lay, under 
the leaden seal of general neglect ; the public when asked 
what it thought, had answered hitherto by a lazy stare. It 
shall answer otherwise, thought Sterling ; by no means 
taking that as the final response. It was in this same 
September that he announced to me and other friends, 
under seal of secrecy as usual, the completion, or complete 
first- draught, of " a new Poem reaching to two thousand 
verses." By working ' three hours every morning ' he 
had brought it so far. This Piece, entitled The Election, 
of which in due time we obtained perusal, and had to give 
some judgment, proved to be in a new vein, — what might 
be called the mock-heroic, or sentimental Hudibrastic, re- 
minding one a little, too, of Wieland's Oberon ; — it had 
touches of true drollery combined not ill with grave clear 
insight ; shewed spirit everywhere, and a plainly improved 
power of execution. Our stingy verdict was to the effect, 
" Better, but still not good enough: — why follow that sad 
* metrical ' course, climbing the loose sandhills, when you 
have a firm path along the plain ?" To Sterling himself it 
remained dubious whether so slight a strain, new though it 
were, would suffice to awaken the sleeping public ; and the 
Piece was thrown away and taken up again, at intervals ; 
and the question, Publish or not publish ? lay many months 
undecided. 

Meanwhile his own feeling was now set more and more 
towards Poetry : and in spite of symptoms and dissuasions, 
and perverse prognostics of outward wind and weather, he 



268 JOHN STERLING. 

was rallying all his force for a downright struggle with it ; 
resolute to see which was the stronger. It must be owned, 
- he takes his failures in the kindliest manner ; and goes 
along, bating no jot of heart or hope. Perhaps I should 
have more admired this than I did ! My dissuasions, in 
that case, might have been fainter. But then my sincerity, 
which was all the use of my poor counsel in assent or dis- 
sent, would have been less. He was now furthermore busy 
with a Tragedy of Strafford, the theme of many failures in 
Tragedy ; planning it industriously in his head ; eagerly 
reading in Whitlocke, Rusliivorih and the Puritan Books, 
to attain a vesture and local habitation for it* Faithful 
assiduous studies, I do believe ; — of which, knowing my 
stubborn realism, and savage humor towards singing by the 
Thespian or other methods, he told me little during his 
visits that summer. 

The advance of the dark weather sent him adrift again; 
to Torquay, for this winter : there, in his old Falmouth 
climate, he hoped to do well ; — and did, so far as welldoing 
was readily possible, in that sad wandering way of life. 
However, be where he may, he tries to work, ' two or three 
hours in the morning,' were it even ' with a lamp,' in bed, 
before the fires are lit ; and so makes something of it. 
From abundant Letters of his now before me, I glean these 
two or three small glimpses ; sufficient for our purpose at 
present. The general date is ' Tor, near Torquay :' 

Tor, November ^Oth, 1840 (To Mrs. CJiarles Fox, Fal- 
moutli). — ' I reached this place on Thursday ; having, after 
much hesitation, resolved to come here, at least for the 
next three weeks, — with some obscure purpose of embark- 



TWO WINTERS. 269 

ing, at the New Year, from Falmouth for Malta, and so 
reaching Naples, which I have not seen. There was also 
a doubt whether I should not, after Christmas, bring my 
family here for the first four months of the year. All this, 
however, is still doubtful. But for certain inhabitants of 
Falmouth and its neighborhood, this place would be far 
more attractive than it. But I have here also friends, 
whose kindness, like much that I met with last winter, per- 
petually makes me wonder at the stock of benignity in 
human nature. A brother of my friend Julius Hare, Mar- 
cus by name, a Naval man, and though not a man of letters, 
full of sense and knowledge, lives here in a beautiful place, 
with a most agreeable and excellent wife, a daughter of 
Lord Stanley of Alderley. I had hardly seen them before ; 
but they are fraternizing with me, in a much better than 
the Jacobin fashion ; and one only feels ashamed at the 
enormity of some people's good nature. I am in a little 
rural sort of lodging ; and as comfortable as a solitary 
oyster can expect to be.' — 

December 5th, (^To C. Barton). — ' This place is ex- 
tremely small, much more so than Falmouth even ; but 
pretty cheerful, and very mild in climate. There are a 
great many villas in and about the little Town, having 
three or four reception-rooms, eight or ten bed-rooms ; and 
costing about fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds each, 
and occupied by persons spending a thousand or more 
pounds a-year. If the Country would acknowledge my 
merits by the gift of one of these, I could prevail on myself 
to come and live here ; which would be the best move for 
my health I could make in England ; but, in the absence 
23* 



270 JOHN STERLING. 

of any such expression of public feeling, it would come 
rather dear.' — 

December 22d (^To Mrs. Fox again). — ' By the way, 
did you ever read a Novel ? If you ever mean to do so 
hereafter, let it be Miss Martineau's Deerlrook. It is 
really very striking ; and parts of it are very true and very 
beautiful. It is not so true, or so thoroughly clear and 
harmonious, among delineations of English middle-class 
gentility, as Miss Austin's books, especially as Pride and 
Prejudice, which I think exquisite ; but it is worth reading. 
The Sour and the Man is eloquent, but an absurd exagger- 
ation. — I hold out so valorously against this Scandinavian 
weather, that I deserve to be ranked with Odin and Thor, 
and fancy I may go to live at Clifton or Drontheim. Have 
you had the same icy desolation as prevails here ? ' 

December 2Sth (^To W. Conyngham, Esq.). — ' Looking 
back to him,' (a deceased Uncle, father of his correspon- 
dent), ' as I now very often do, I feel strongly, what the 
loss of other friends has also impressed on me, how much 
Death deepens our affection ; and sharpens our regret for 
whatever has been even slightly amiss in our conduct 
towards those who are gone. What trifles then swell into 
painful importance ; how we believe that, could the past be 
recalled, life would present no worthier, happier task, than 
that of so bearing ourselves towards those we love, that we 
might ever after find nothing but melodious tranquillity 
breathing about their graves ! Yet, too often, I feel the 
difficulty of always practicing such mild wisdom towards 
those who are still left me. — You will wonder less at my 
rambling off in this way, when I tell you that my little 
lodging is close to a picturesque old Church and Church- 



TWO WINTERS. 271 

yard, where, every day, I brush past a tombstone, record- 
ing that an Italian, of Manferrato, has buried there a girl 
of sixteen, his only daughter : " L'unica speranza di mia 
vitay — No doubt, as you say, our Mechanical Age is 
necessary as a passage to something better ; but, at least, 
do not let us go back.' — 

At the New-year time, feeling unusually well, he returns 
to Clifton. His plans, of course, were ever fluctuating ; 
his movements were swift and uncertain. Alas, his whole 
life, especially his winter-life, had to be built as if on waver- 
ing drift-sand ; nothing certain in it, except if possible the 
' two or three hours of work ' snatched from the general 
whirlpool of the dubious four-and-twenty ! 

Clifton, January 10th, 1841 (Tb Dr. Carlyle). — ' I 
stood the sharp frost at Torquay with such entire impunity, 
that at last I took courage, and resolved to return home. 
I have been here a week, in extreme cold ; and have suf- 
fered not at all ; so that I hope, with care I may prosper in 
spite of medical prognostics, — if you permit such profane 
language. I am even able to work a good deal ; and write 
for some hours every morning, by dint of getting up early, 
which an Arnott-stove in my study enables me to do.' — 
But at Clifton he cannot continue. Again, before long, 
the rude weather has driven him Southward ; the spring 
finds him in his former haunts ; doubtful as ever what to 
decide upon for the future ; but tending evidently towards 
a new change of residence for household and self: 

Penzance, April IWi, 1811 ,(2b W. Conyngliam, 
Esq.'). — -' My little Boy and I have been wandering about 
between Torquay and this place ; and latterly have had my 
Father for a few days with us, — he left us yesterday. In 



272 JOHN STERLING. 

all probability I shall endeavor to settle either at Torquay, 
at Falmouth, or here ; as it is pretty clear that I cannot 
stand the sharp air of Clifton, and still less the London east 
•winds. Penzance is, on the whole, a pleasant-looking, 
cheerful place ; -with a delightful mildness of air, and a 
great appearance of comfort among the people : the view 
of Mount's Bay is certainly a very noble one. Torquay 
would suit the health of my Wife and Children better ; or 
else I should be glad to live here always, London and its 
neighborhood being impracticable.' — Such was his second 
wandering winter ; enough to render the prospect of a third 
at Clifton very uninviting. 

With the Falmouth friends, young and old, his inter- 
course had meanwhile continued cordial and frequent. The 
omens were pointing towards that region as his next place 
of abode. Accordingly, in few weeks hence, in the June 
of this Summer 1841, his dubitations and inquirings are 
again ended for a time ; he has fixed upon a house in Fal- 
mouth, and removed thither ; bidding Clifton, and the re- 
gretful Clifton friends, a kind farewell. This was the fifth 
change of place for his family since Bayswater ; the fifth, 
and to one chief member of it the last. Mrs. Sterling had 
brought him a new child in October last ; and went hope- 
fully to Falmouth, dreading oilier than what .befell there. 



FALMOUTH: POEMS. 273 



CHAPTER X. 



EALMOUTH : POEMS. 



At Falmouth, as usual, he was soon at home in his new en- 
vironment ; resumed his labors ; had his new small circle of 
acquaintance, the ready and constant centre of which was 
the Fox family, with whom he lived on an altogether inti- 
mate, honored and beloved footing ; realizing his best antici- 
pations in that respect, which doubtless were among his 
first inducements to settle in this new place. Open cheery 
heights, rather bare of wood ; fresh Southwestern breezes ; 
a brisk laughing sea, swept by industrious sails, and the 
nets of a most stalwart, wholesome, frank and interesting 
population : the clean little fishing, trading and packet 
Town ; hanging on its slope towards the Eastern sun, close 
on the waters of its basin and intricate bay, — with the 
miniature Pendennis Castle seaward on the right, the mini- 
ature St. Mawes landward to left, and the mining world 
and the farming world open boundlessly to the rear : — all 
this made a pleasant outlook and environment. And in all 
this, as in the. other new elements of his position. Sterling, 
open beyond most men to the worth of things about him, 
took his frank share. From the first, he had liked the 
general aspect of the population, aoad their healthy, lively 
ways ; not to speak of the special friendships he had formed 
there, which shed a charm over them all. ' Men of strong 



274 JOHN STERLING. 

character, clear heads and genuine goodness,' writes he, 
' are by no means wanting.' And long after : ' The com- 
mon people here dress better than in most parts of Eng- 
land ; and on Sundays, if the weather be at all fine, their 
appearance is very pleasant. One sees them all round the 
Town, especially towards Pendennis Castle, streaming in a 
succession of little groups, and seeming for the most part 
really and quietly happy.' On the whole he reckoned 
himself lucky ; and, so far as locality went, found this a 
handsome shelter for the next two years of his life. Two 
years, and not without an interruption ; that was all. Here 
we have no continuing city ; he less than any of us ! One 
other flight for shelter ; and then it is ended, and he has " 
found an inexpugnable refuge. Let us trace his remote 
footsteps, as we have opportunity : 

Falmouth^ June 28th, 1841 QTo Dr. Simmons, Clifton'), 
— ' Newman writes to me that he is gone to the Rhine. I 
wish I were ! And yet the only " wish " at the bottom of 
my heart, is to be able to work vigorously in my own way 
any where, were it in some Circle of Dante's Inferno. This, 
however, is the secret of my soul, which I disclose only to a 
few.' 

Falmouth, July 6th, 1841 QTo his Blother). — ' I have at 
last my own study made comfortable ; the carpet being now 
laid down, and most of my appurtenances in tolerable order. 
By and by I shall, unless stopped by illness, get myself to- 
gether, and begin living an orderly life and doing my daily 
task. I have swung a cot in my dressing-room ; partly as 
a convenience for myself, partly as a sort of memorial of 
my poor Uncle, in whose cot in his dressing-room at Lis- 
worney I remember to have slept when a child. I have 



FALMOUTH : POEMS. 275 

put a good large bookcase in my drawing-room, and all the 
rest of mj books fit very well into the study.' 

Same day (To Myself^. — ' No books have come in my 
way but Emerson's, which I value full as much as you, 
though as yet I have read only some corners of it. We 
have had an Election here, of the usual stamp ; to me a 
droll " realized Ideal," after my late metrical adventures 
in that line. But the oddest sign of the Times I know, is 
a cheap Translation of Strauss's Lehen Jesu, now publishing 
in numbers, and said to be circulating far and wide. What 
does, — or rather what does not, — this portend ?' 

With the Poem called The Election, here alluded to, 
which had been more than once revised and reconsidered, 
he was still under some hesitations ; but at last had w^ell- 
nigh resolved, as from the first it was clear he would do, 
on publishing it. This occupied some occasional portion of 
his thoughts. But his grand private afiair, I believe, was 
now Straffoixl ; to which, or to its adjuncts, all working 
hours were devoted. Sterling's notions of Tragedy are 
high enough. This is what he writes once, in reference to 
his own task in these weeks : ' Few, I fancy, know how 
much harder it is to write a Tragedy, than to realize or be 
one. Every man has in his heart and lot, if he pleases, 
and too many whether they please or no, all the woes of 
Oedipus and Antigone. But it takes the One, the Sopho- 
cles of a thousand years, to utter these in the full depth 
and harmony of creative song. Curious, by the way, how 
that Dramatic Form of the old Greek, with only some su- 
perficial changes, remains a law not only for the stage, but 
for the thoughts of all Poets : and what a charm it has 



276 JOHN STERLING. 

even for the reader who never saw a theatre. The Greek 
Plajs and Shakspeare have interested a hundred as books, 
for one who has seen their writings acted. How lightly 
does the mere clown, the idle school-girl, build a private 
theatre in the fancy, and laugh or weep with Falstaif and 
Macbeth ; with how entire an oblivion of the artificial na- 
ture of the whole contrivance, which thus compels them to 
be their own architects, machinists, scene-painters and 
actors ! In fact, the artifice succeeds, — becomes grounded 
in the substance of the soul : and every one loves to feel 
how he is thus brought face to face with the brave, the 
fair, the woful and the great of all past ages ; looks into 
their eyes, and feels the beatings of their hearts ; and 
reads, over the shoulder, the secret written tablets of the 
busiest and the largest brains ; while the Juggler, by whose 
cunning the whole strange beautiful absurdity is set in mo- 
tion, keeps himself hidden ; sings loud with a mouth un- 
moving as that of a statue, and makes the human race 
cheat itself unanimously and delightfully by the illusion 
that he preordains ; while as an obscure Fate, he sits in- 
visible, and hardly lets his being be divined by those who 
cannot flee him. The Lyric Art is childish, and the Epic 
barbarous compared to this. But of the true and perfect 
Drama it may be said, as of even higher mysteries. Who 
is sufficient for these things V — On this Tragedy of Straf- 
ford, writing it and again writing it, studying for it, and 
bending himself with his whole strength to do his best on 
it, he expended many strenuous months, — ' above a year of 
his life,' as he computes, in all. 

For the rest, what Falmouth has to give him he is will- 
ing to take, and mingles freely in it. In Hare's Collec. 



FALMOUTH: POEMS. 277 

tion there is given a Lecture which he read in Autumn 
18-il (Mr. Hare says '1842,' by mistake), to a certain 
Public Institution in the place, — of \Yhich more anon : — a 
piece interesting in this, if not much in any other respect. 
Doubtless his friends the Foxes were at the heart of that 
lecturing enterprise, and had urged and solicited him. 
Something like proficiency in certain branches of science, 
as I have understood, characterized one or more of this 
estimable family ; love of knowledge, taste for art, wish to 
consort with wisdom and wise men, were the tendencies of 
all : to opulent means superadd the Quaker beneficence, 
Quaker purity and reverence, there is a circle in which 
wise men also may love to be. Sterling made acquaintance 
here with whatever of notable in worthy persons or things 
might be afoot in those parts ; and was led thereby, now 
and then into pleasant reunions, in new circles of activity, 
which might otherwise have continued foreign to him. The 
good Calvert, too, was now here ; and intended to remain ; 
— which he mostly did henceforth, lodging in Sterling's 
neighborhood, so long as lodging in this world was per- 
mitted him. Still good and clear and cheerful; still a 
lively comrade, within doors or without, — a diligent rider 
always, — though now wearing visibly weaker, and less able 
to exert himself. 

Among those accidental Falmouth reunions, perhaps the 
notablest for Sterling occurred in this his first season. 
There is in Falmouth an Association called the Cornwall 
Polytechnic Society^ established about twenty years ago, 
and supported by the wealthy people of the Town and 
neighborhood, for the encouragement of the Arts in that 
region : it has its Library, its Museum, some kind of An- 
24 



278 JOHN STERLING. 

nual Exhibition -witlial ; gives prizes, publishes reports : the 
main patrons, I believe, are Sir Charles Lemon, a well- 
known country gentleman of those parts, and the Messrs. 
Fox. To this, so far as he liked to go in it, Sterling was 
sure to be introduced and sohcited. The Polytechnic 
Meeting of 1841 was unusually distinguished ; and Sterling's 
part in it formed one of the pleasant occurrences for him in 
Falmouth. It was here that, among other profitable as 
well as pleasant things, he made acquaintance with Pro- 
fessor Owen (an event of which I too had my benefit in 
due time, and still have) : the bigger assemblage called 
British Association, which met at Plymouth this year, 
having now just finished its afiairs there, Owen and other 
distinguished persons had taken Falmouth in their route 
from it. Sterling's account of his Polytechnic gala still 
remains, — in three Letters to his Father, which omitting 
the extraneous portions, I will give in one, — as a piece 
worth reading among those still-life pictures ; 

' To Edward Sterling , Esq., Knightshridge, London. 

• Falmouth, Aug. 10th, 1841. 

' My dear Father, — I was not well for a day or two 
after you went ; and since, I have been busy about an an- 
nual show of the Polytechnic Society here, in which my 
friends take much interest, and for which I have been act- 
ing as one of the judges in the department of the Fine 
Arts, and have written a little Report for them. As I 
have not said that Falmouth was as eminent as Athens or 
Florence, perhaps the Committee will not adopt my state- 
ment. But if they do, it will be of some use ; for I have 



FALMOUTH: POEMS. 279 

hinted, as delicately as possible, that people should not paint 
historical pictures before they have the power of drawing a 
decent outline of a pig or a cabbage. I saw Sir Charles 
Lemon yesterday, who was kind as well as civil in his man- 
ner ; and promises to be a pleasant neighbor. There are 
several of the British Association heroes here ; but not 
Whewell, or any one whom I know.' 

August nth. — ' At the Polytechnic Meeting here we 
had several very eminent men ; among others, Professor 
Owen, said to be the first of comparative anatomists, and 
Connybeare, the geologist. Both of these gave evening 
Lectures ; and after Conybeare's, at which I happened to 
be present, I said I would, if they chose, make some re- 
marks on the Busts, which happened to be standing there, 
intended for prizes in the department of the Fine Arts. 
They agreed gladly. The heads were Homer, Pericles, 
Augustus, Dante and Michael Angelo. I got into the box- 
like platform, with these on a shelf before me ; and began 
a talk, which must have lasted^ some three-quarters of an 
hour ; describing partly the characters and circumstances 
of the men, illustrated by anecdotes and compared with 
their physiognomies, and partly the several styles of sculp- 
ture exhibited in the Casts, referring these to what I con- 
sidered the true principles of the Art. The subject was 
one that interests me, and I got on in famous style ; and 
had both pit and galleries all applauding, in a way that had 
no precedent during any other part of the meeting. Cony- 
beare paid me high compliments ; Owen looked much 
pleased, — an honor well purchased by a year's hard work ; 
— and every body, in short, seemed delighted. Susan was 
not there, and I had nothing to make me nervous ; so that 



280 JOHN STEaLING. 

I worked away freely, and got vigorously over the ground. 
After so many years' disuse of rhetoric, it was a pleasant 
surprise to myself to find that I could still handle the old 
weapons without awkwardness. More by good luck than 
good guidance, it has done my health no harm. I have 
been at Sir Charles Lemon's though only to pay a morning 
visit, having declined or stay there or dine, the hours not 
suiting me. They were very civil. The person I saw 
most of was his sister, Lady Dunstanville ; a pleasant, well- 
informed and well-bred woman. He seems a most amiable, 
kindly man, of fair good sense and cultivated tastes. — I 
had a letter today from my Mother ' in Scotland ; ' who 
says she sent you one which you were to forward me; 
which I hope soon to have.' 

August ^dth. — ' I returned yesterday from Carclew, 
Sir C. Lemon's fine place about five miles ofi"; where I had 
been staying a couple of days, with apparently the hearti- 
est welcome. Susan was asked ; but wanting a Governess, 
could not leave home. 

' Sir Charles is a widower (his Wife was sister to Lord 
Lchester) without children ; but had a niece staying with 
him, and his sister Lady Dunstanville, a pleasant and very 
civil woman. There were also Mr. Bunbury, eldest son 
of Sir Henry Bunbury, a man of much cultivation and 
strong talents ; Mr. Fox Talbot, son I think of another II- 
chester lady, and brother of the Talbot of Wales, but him- 
self a man of large fortune, and known for photogenic and 
other scientific plana of extracting sunbeams from cucum- 
bers. He also is a man of known ability, but chiefly em- 
ployed in that peculiar department. Item Professors Lloyd 
and Owen : the former, of Dublin, son of the late Provost, I 



FALMOUTH : POEMS. 281 

had seen before and knew ; a great mathematician and op- 
tician, and a discoverer in those matters ; with a clever 
httle Wife, who has a great deal of knowledge, quite free 
from pretension. Owen is a first-rate comparative anato- 
mist, they say the greatest since Cuvier ; lives in London, 
and lectures there. On the whole he interested me more 
than any of them, — by an apparent force and downright- 
ness of mind, combined with much simphcity and frank- 
ness. 

* Nothing could be pleasanter and easier than the habits 
of life, with what to me was a very unusual degree of lux- 
ury, though probably nothing but what was in common among 
people of large fortune. The library and pictures are 
nothing extraordinary. The general tone of good nature, 
good sense and quiet freedom, was what struck me most ; 
and I think besides this there was a disposition to be cordi- 
ally courteous towards me.' — 

' I took Edward a ride of two hours yesterday on Cal- 
vert's pony, and he is improving fast in horsemanship. 
The school appears to answer very well. We shall have 
the Governess in a day or two, which will be a great satis- 
faction. Will you send my Mother this scribble with my 
love ; and believe me, — your affectionate son, 

*JoHN Sterling.' 

One other little event dwells with me, out of those Fal- 
mouth times, exact date now forgotten ; a pleasant little 
matter in which Sterling, and principally the Misses Fox, 
bright cheery young creatures, were concerned ; which, 
for the sake of its human interest, is worth mention. In a 
certain Cornish mine, said the Newspapers duly specifying 
2^* 



282 JOHN STERLING. 

it, two miners deep down in the shaft were engaged putting 
in a shot for blasting : thej had completed their aifair, and 
were about to give the signal for being hoisted up, — one at 
a time was all their coadjutor at the top could manage, and 
the second was to kindle the match, and then mount with 
all speed. Now it chanced that while they were both still 
below, one of them thought the match too long ; tried to 
break it shorter, took a couple of stones, a flat and a sharp, 
to cut it shorter ; did cut it off the due length, but horrible 
to relate, kindled at the same time, and both were still 
below 1 Both shouted vehemently to the coadjutor at the 
windlass, both sprang at the basket ; the windlass man 
could not move it with them both. Here was a moment 
for poor miner Jack and miner Will ! Instant horrible 
death hangs over both, — when Will generously resigns 
himself: "Go aloft, Jack," and sits down; away; "in 
one minute I shall be in Heaven ! " Jack abounds aloft, 
the explosion instantly follows, bruises his face as he looks 
over ; he is safe above ground : and poor Will ? Descend- 
ing eagerly they find Will too, as if by miracle, buried 
under rocks which had arched themselves over him, and 
little injured: he too is brought up safe, and all ends 
joyfully says the newspapers. 

Such a piece of manful promptitude, and salutary human 
heroism, was worth investigating. It was investigated ; 
found to be accurate to the letter, — with this addition and 
explanation, that Will, an honest, ignorant good man, 
entirely given up to Methodism, had been perfect in the 
" faith of assurance," certain that he should get to Heaven 
if he died, certain that Jack would not, which had been the 
ground of his decision in that great moment ; — for the rest, 



FALMOUTH: POEMS. 283 

that he much wished to learn reading and writing, and 
find some way of life above ground instead of below. By 
aid of the Misses Fox and the rest of that family, a sub- 
scription (modest ^w!!j-Hudson testimonial) was raised to 
this Methodist hero : he emerged into daylight with fifty 
pounds in his pocket ; did strenuously try, for certain 
months, to learn reading and writing ; found he could not 
learn those arts or either of them ; , took his money and 
bought cows with it, wedding at the same time some relig- 
ious likely milk-maid ; and is, last time I heard of him, a 
prosperous modest dairyman, thankful for the upper light 
and safety from the wrath to come. Sterling had some 
hand in this affair : but, as I said, it was the two young 
ladies of the family that mainly did it. 

In the end of 1841, after many hesitations and revisals, 
Tlie Electio7i came out ; a tiny Duodecimo without name 
attached;* again inquiring of the public what its suffrage 
was ; again to little purpose. My vote had never been 
loud for this step, but neither was it quite adverse ; and 
now, in reading the poor little Poem over again, after ten 
years space, I find it, with a touching mixture of pleasure 
and repentance, considerably better than it then seemed to 
me. My encouragement, if not to print this Poem, yet to 
proceed with Poetry, since there was such a resolution for 
it, might have been a Uttle more decided ! 

This is a small Piece, but aims at containing great 
things ; a onuUum in parvo after its sort ; and is executed 
here and there with undeniable success. The style is free 

* The Election : a Poem, in Seven Books. London, Murray, 1841. 



284 JOHN STERLING. 

and flowing, the rhyme dances along with a certain joyful 
triumph ; every thing of due brevity withal. That mixture 
of mockery on the surface, which finely relieves the real 
earnestness within, and flavors even what is not very earn- 
est and might even be insipid otherwise, is not ill managed : 
an amalgam difficult to effect well in writing ; nay impossi- 
ble in writing, — unless it stand already done and efiected, 
as a general fact, in .the writer's mind and character ; 
which will betoken a certain ripeness there. 

As I said, great things are intended in this little Piece ; 
the motto itself foreshadowing them : 

' Fluellen. Ancient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning. 
^Pistol. Why then rejoice therefor.' 

A stupid commonplace English Borough has lost its Mem- 
ber suddenly, by apoplexy or otherwise ; resolves, in the 
usual explosive temper of mind, to replace him by one of 
two others : whereupon strange stirring up of rival-attorney 
and other human interests and catastrophes. ' Frank 
Vane ' (Sterling himself,) and ' Peter Mogg ' the pattern 
English blockhead of elections : these are the candidates. 
They are, of course, fierce rival attorneys ; electors of all 
creeds and complexions to be canvassed ; a poor stupid 
Borough thrown all into red or white heat ; into blazing 
paroxysms of activity and enthusiasm, which render the 
inner life of it (and of England and the world through it) 
luminously transparent, so to speak ; — of which opportunity 
our friend and his ' Muse ' take dexterous advantage, to 
delineate the same. His pictures are uncommonly good ; 
brief, joyous, sometimes conclusively true : in rigorously 
compressed shape, all is merry freshness and exuberance ; 



FALMOUTH: POEMS. 285 

we have leafy summer embowering red bricks and small 
human interests, presented as in glowing miniature ; a 
mock-heroic action fitly interwoven ;— ^and many a clear 
glance is carelessly given into the deepest things by the 
way. Very happy also is the little love-episode ; and the 
absorption of all the interest into that, on the part of Frank 
Vane and of us, when once this gallant Frank, — having 
fairly from his barrelhead stated his own (and John Ster- 
ling's) views on the aspects of the world, and of course 
having quite broken down with his attorney and his public, 
— handsomely, by stratagem, gallops off with the fair 
Anne ; and leaves free field to Mogg, free field to the 
Hippopotamus if it like. This portrait of Mogg may be 
considered to have merit : 



' Tliough short of clays, how large the mind of man ; 
A godlike force enclosed within a span ! 
To climb the skies we spurn our nature's clog, 
And toil as Titans to elect a Mogg. 

' And who was Mogg V Muse ! the man declara 
How excellent his worth, his parts how rare. 
A younger son, he learnt in Oxford's halls 
The spheral harmonies of billiard-balls, 
Drank, hunted, drove, and hid from Virtue's frown 
His venial follies in Decorum's gown. 
Too wise to doubt on insufficient cause. 
He signed old Cranmer's lore without a pause ; 
And knew that logic's cunning rules are taught 
To guard out creed, and not invigorate thought, — 
As those bronze steeds at Venice, kept for pride, 
Adorn a town where not one man can ride. 

' From Isis sent with all her loud acclaims, 
The laws he studied on the banks of Thames. 
Park, race and play, in his capacious plan. 
Combined with Coke to form the finished man, 
Until the wig's ambrosial influence shed 
Its last full glories on the lawyer's head. 



286 JOHN STERLING. 

' But vain are mortal schemes. The eldest son 
At Harrier Hall had scarce his stud begun, 
When Death's pale courser took the Squire away 
To lands where never dawns a hunting-day ; 
And so, while Thomas vanished 'mid the fog, 
Bright rose the star of Peter Mogg. ' * 

And this little picture, in a quite opposite way : 

' Now, in her chamber all alone, the maid 

Her polished limbs and shoulders disarrayed ; 

One little taper gave the only light, 

One little mirror caught so dear a sight ; 

'Mid hangings dusk and shadows wide she stood, 

Like some pale Nymph in dark -leafed solitude 

Of rocks and gloomy waters all alone, 

Where sunshine scarcely breaks on stump or stone 
To scare the dreamy vision. Thus did she, 
A star in deepest night, intent but free, 
Gleam through the eyeless darkness, heeding not 
Her beauty's praise, but musing o'er her lot. 
' Her garments one by one she laid aside, 
And then her knotted hair's long locks untied 
With careless hand, and down her cheeks they fell. 
And o'er her maiden bosom's blue-veined swell. 
The right-hand fingers played amidst the hair, 
And with her reverie wandered here and there : 
The other hand sustained the only dress 
That now but half concealed her loveliness ; 
And pausing, aimlessly she stood and thought, 
In virgin beauty by no fear distraught.' 

Manifold, and beautiful of their sort, and Anne's musings, 
in this interesting attitude, in the summer midnight, in the 
crisis of her destiny now near ; — at last : 

' But Anne, at last her mute devotions o'er, 
Perceived the fact she had forgot before 
Of her too shocking nudity ; and shame 
Flushed from her heart o'er all the snowy frame : 

~~" *Pp. 7, 8. 



FALMOUTH : POEMS. 287 

And, struck from top to toe with burning dread, 
She blew the light out, and escaped to bed.' * 

—which also is a very pretty movement. 

It must be owned withal, the Piece is crude in parts, and 
far enough from perfect. Our good painter has yet several 
things to learn, and to unlearn. His brush is not always of 
the finest ; and dashes about, sometimes, in a recognizably 
sprawling way ; but it hits many a feature with decisive 
accuracy and felicity ; and on the palette, as usual, lie the 
richest colors. A grand merit, too, is the brevity of every 
thing ; by no means a spontaneous, or quite common merit 
with Sterling. 

This new poetic Duodecimo, as the last had done and as 

the next also did, met with little or no recognition from the 

world : which was not very inexcusable on the world's part ; 

though many a poem with far less proof of merit than this 

offers, has run, when the accidents favored it, through its 

tens of editions, and raised the writer to the demigods for a 

year or two, if not longer. Such as it is, we may take it 

as marking, in its small way, in a noticed or unnoticed 

manner, a new height arrived at by Sterling in his Poetic 

course ; and almost as vindicating the determination he 

had formed to keep climbing by that method. Poor Poem, 

or rather Promise of a Poem ! In Sterling's brave struggle, 

this little Election is the highest point he fairly lived to see 

attained, and openly demonstrated in print. His next 

public adventure in this kind was of inferior worth ; and a 

third, which had perhaps intrinsically gone much higher than 

any of its antecessors, was cut off as a fragment, and has 

* Pp. 89-93. 



288 \ JOHN STERLING. 

not hitherto been published. Steady courage is needed on 
the Poetic course, as on all courses ! — 

Shortly after this Publication, in the beginning of 1842, 
poor Calvert, long a hopeless sufferer, was delivered by 
death : Sterling's faithful fellow pilgrim could no more 
attend him in his wayfarings through this world. The 
weary and heavyladen man had borne his burden well. 
Sterling says of him to Hare : ' Since I wrote last, I have 
lost Calvert ; the man with Avhom, of all others, I have 
been during late years the most intimate. Simplicity, 
benevolence, practical good sense and moral earnestness 
were his great unfailing characteristics ; and no man, I 
believe, ever possessed them more entirely. His illness 
had latterly so prostrated him, both in mind and body, that 
those who most loved him were most anxious for his 
departure.' There was something touching in this exit ; 
in the quenching of so kind and bright a little life under 
the dark billows of death. To me he left a curious old 
Print of James Naylor the Quaker, which I still affection- 
ately preserve. 

Sterling, from this greater distance, came perhaps rather 
seldomer to London ; but we saw him still at moderate 
intervals ; and, through his family here and other direct 
and indirect channels, were kept in lively communication 
with him. Literature was still his constant pursuit ; and, 
with encouragement or without, Poetic composition his 
chosen department therein. On the ill success of The 
Election, or any ill success with the world, nobody ever 
heard him utter the least murmur ; condolence upon that 



FALMOUTH : POEMS. 289 

or any such subject miglit have been a questionable opera- 
tion, bj no means called for ! Naj my own approval, 
higher than this of the world, had been languid, by no 
means enthusiastic. But our valiant friend took all quiet- 
ly ; and was not to be repulsed from his Poetics either 
by the world's coldness or by mine ; he labored at his 
Strafford; — determined to labor, in all ways, till he felt 
the end of his tether in this direction. 

He sometimes spoke, with a certain zeal, of my starting 
a Periodical : Why not lift up some kind of war-flag against 
the obese platitudes, and sickly superstitious aperies and 
impostures of the time ? But I had to answer, " "Who will 
join it, my friend ?" He seemed to say, " I, for one ;" 
and there was occasionally a transient temptation in the 
thought, but transient only. No fighting regiment, with 
the smallest attempt towards drill, cooperation, commissa- 
riat, or the like unspeakable advantages, could be raised in 
Sterling's time or mine ; which truly, to honest fighters, is 
a rather grievous want. A grievous, but not quite a fatal 
one. For, failing this, failing all things and all men, there 
remains the solitary battle (and were it by the poorest 
weapon, the tongue only, or were it even by wise absti- 
nence and silence and without any weapon), such as each 
man for himself can wage while he has life : an indubitable 
and infinitely comfortable fact for every man ! Said battle 
shaped itself for Sterhng, as we have long since seen, 
chiefly in the poetic form, in the singing or hymning rather 
than the speaking form ; and in that he was cheerfully as- 
siduous according to his light. The unfortunate Strafford 
is far on towards completion ; a Coeur-de-Lion, of which we 
phall hear farther, ' Coeur-de-Idon, greatly the best of all 
25 



290 JOHN STERLING. 

his Poems,' unluckily not completed, and still unpublished, 
already hangs in the wind. 

His Letters to friends continue copious ; and he has, as 
always, a loyally interested eye on whatsoever of notable is 
passing in the world. Especially on whatsoever indicates 
to him the spiritual condition of the world. Of ' Strauss,' 
in English or in German, we now hear nothing more ; of 
Church matters, and that only to special correspondents, 
less and less. Strauss, whom he used to mention, had in- 
terested him only as a sign of the times ; in which sense 
alone do we find, for a year or two back, any notice of the 
Church or its affairs by Sterling ; and at last even this as 
good as ceases : " Adieu, Church ; thy road is that 
way, mine is this: in God's name, adieu!" 'What we 
are going io,' says he once, ' is abundantly obscure ; but 
what all men are going from, is very plain.' — Sifted out 
of many pages, not of sufficient interest, here are one or 
two miscellaneous sentences, about the date we are now 
arrived at : 

Falmouth, 2>d November, 1841 (To Dr. Simmons'). — 
* Yesterday was my Wedding-day : eleven years of mar- 
riage ; and on the whole my verdict is clear for matrimony. 
I solemnized the day by reading John Gilpin to the chil- 
dren, who with their Mother are all pretty well.' * * * 
' There is a trick of sham Elizabethan writing now preva- 
lent, that looks plausible, but in most cases means nothing 
at all. Darley has real (lyrical) genius ; Taylor, Avonder- 
ful sense, clearness and weight of purpose ; Tennyson a 
rich and exquisite fancy. All the other men of our tiny 
generation that I know of are, in Poetry, either feeble or 



FALMOUTH : POEMS. 291 

fraudulent. I know nothing of the Reviewer you ask 
about. 

December 11th (^To his Mother'). — ' I have seen no new 
books ; but am reading your last. I got hold of the two 
first Numbers of the Hoggarty Diamond ; and read them 
with extreme delight. What is there better in Fielding or 
Goldsmith ? The man is a true genius ; and, with quiet 
and comfort, might produce masterpieces that would last as 
long as any we have, and delight millions of unborn read- 
ers. There is more truth and nature in one of these -pa- 
pers than in all 's Novels together.' — Thackeray, al- 
ways a close friend of the Sterling house, will observe that 
this is dated 1841, not 1851, and have his own reflections 
on the matter ! 

December 11th (To the same). — 'I am not much sur- 
prised at Lady 's views of Coleridge's little book on 

Inspiration.^ — ' Great part of the obscurity of the Letters 
arises from his anxiety to avoid the difficulties and absurdi- 
ties of the common views, and his panic terror of saying 
any thing that bishops and good people would disapprove. 
He paid a heavy price, viz. all his own candor and simplicity, 

in hope of gaining the favor of persons like Lady ; 

and you see what his reward is ! A good lesson for us 
all.' 

February 1st, 1842 (To the same). — ' English Toryism 
has, even in my eyes, about as much to say for itself as any 
other form of doctrine ; but Irish Toryism is the downright 
proclamation of brutal injustice, and all in the name of 
God and the Bible ! It is almost enough to make one turn 
Mahometan, but for fear of the four wives.' 

3Iarch 12th, 1842 (To his Father).—' * * Important 



292 JOHN STERLING. 

to me as these matters are, it almost seems as if there was 
something unfeeling in writing of them, under the pressure 
of such news as ours from India. If the Cabool Troops 
have perished, England has not received such a blow from 
an enemj, nor anj thing approaching it, since Bucking- 
ham's Expedition to the Isle of Rhe. Walcheren de- 
stroyed us by climate ; and Corunna, with all its loss, had 
much of glory. But here we are dismally injured by mere 
Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well 
as foolish: a combination of disgrace and calamity that 
would have shocked Augustus even more than the defeat 
of Varus. One of the four Officers with Macnaghten was 
George Lawrence, a brother-in-law of Nat Barton ; a dis- 
tinguished man, and the father of five totally unprovided 
children. He is a prisoner, if not since murdered. Mac- 
naghten I do not pity ; he was the prime author of the 
whole mad War. But Burnes ; and the Women ; and our 
regiments ! India, however, I feel sure, is safe.' 

So roll the months at Falmouth ; such is the ticking of 
the great World-Horologe as heard there by a good ear. 
* I willingly add' (so ends he, once), ' that I lately found 
somewhere this fragment of an Arab's love-song : " 
Ghalia ! If my father were a Jackass, I would sell him to 
purchase Ghalia !" A beautiful parallel to the French, 
^^ Avec cette sauce on mangerait son per e^ ' 



NAPLES: POEMS. 293 



CHAPTER XI. 



NAPLES: POEMS. 



In the bleak weather of this spring 1842, he was again 
abroad for a little while ; partly from necessity, or at least 
utility ; and partly, as I guess, because the circumstances 
favored, and he could with a good countenance indulge a 
little wish he had long had. In the Italian Tour, which 
ended suddenly by Mrs. Sterling's illness recalling him, 
he had missed Naples ; a loss which he always thought to 
be considerable ; and which, from time to time, he had 
formed little projects, failures hitherto, for supplying. The 
rigors of spring were always dangerous to him in England, 
and it was always of advantage to get out of them : and 
then the sight of Naples, too ; this, always a thing to be 
done some day, was now possible. Enough, with the real 
or imaginary hope of bettering himself in health, and the 
certain one of seeing Naples, and catching a glance, of 
Italy again, he now made a run thither. It was not long 
after Calvert's death. The Tragedy of Strafford lay 
finished in his desk. Several things, sad and bright, were 
finished. A little intermezzo of ramble was not unadvisable. 
His tour by water and by land was brief and rapid 
enough ; hardly above two months in all. Of which the 
following Letters will, with some abridgment, give us what 
details are needful : 
25* 



294 JOHN STERLING. 

* To Charles Barton, Esq., Leamington, 

' Falmouth, March 25th, 1842. 



( 



My deae Charles, — My attempts to shoot you 'flying 
■with my paper pellets turned out very ill. I hope young 
ladies succeed better when they happen to make appoint- 
ments with you. Even now, I hardly know whether you 
have received a Letter I wrote on Sunday last, and ad- 
dressed to The Cavendish. I sent it thither by Susan's 
advice. 

' In this missive, — happily for us both, it did not contain 
a hundred-pound note or any trifle of that kind, — I in- 
formed you that I was compelled to plan an expedition to- 
wards the South Pole, stopping, however, in the Mediter- 
ranean ; and that I designed leaving this on Monday next 
for Cadiz or Gibraltar, and then going on to Malta, whence 
Italy and Sicily would be accessible. Of course your com- 
pany would be a great pleasure, if it were possible for you 
to join me. The delay in hearing from you, through no 
fault of yours, has naturally put me out a little ; but, on the 
whole, my plan still holds, and I shall leave this on Monday 
for Gibraltar, where the Crreat Liverpool will catch me, 
and carry me to Malta. The Great Liverpool leaves South- 
ampton on the 1st April, and Falmouth on the 2d ; and will 
reach Gibraltar in from four to five days. 

' Now, if you should be able and disposed to join me, 
you have only to embark in that sumptuous teakettle, and 
pick me up under the guns of the Rock. We could then 
cruise on to Malta, Sicily, Naples, Rome, &c. a discretion. 
It is just possible, though extremely improbable, that my 
steamer of Monday (most likely the Montrose} may not 



NAPLES: POEMS. 295 

reach Gibraltar so soon as the Liverpool. If so, and if 
you should actually be on board, you must stop at Gibral- 
tar. But there are ninety-chances to one against this. 
Write at all events to Susan, to let her know what you 
propose. 

' I do not wait till the G-reat Liverpool goes, because the 
object for me is to get into a warm climate as soon as possi- 
ble. I am decidedly better. — Your affectionate Brother, 

'John Sterling.' 

Barton did not go with him, none went ; but he arrives 
safe, and not hurt in health, which is something. 

* To Mrs. Sterling, Knightshridge, London. 

' Malta, April 14th, 1842. 

* Dearest Mother, — I am writing to Susan through 
France, by tomorrow's mail ; and will also send you a line, 
instead of waiting for the longer English conveyance. 

* We reached this the day before yesterday, in the even- 
ing ; having had a strong breeze against us for a day or 
two before ; which made me extremely uncomfortable, — 
and indeed my headache has hardly gone yet. From about 
the 4th to the 9th of the month, we had beautiful weather, 
and I was happy enough. You will see by the map that 
the straightest line from Gibraltar to this place goes close 
along the African coast ; which accordingly we saw with 
the utmost clearness ; and found it generally a line of 
mountains, the higher peaks and ridges covered with snow. 
We went close in to Algiers ; which looks strong, but en- 
tirely from art. The town lies on the slope of a straight 



296 JOHN STERLING. 

coast ; and is not at all embayed, though there is some 
little shelter for shipping within the mole. It is a square 
patch of "white buildings huddled together ; fringed with ' 
batteries ; and commanded bj large forts on the ridge 
above : a most uncomfortable-looking place ; though, no 
doubt, there are cafes and billiard-rooms and a theatre 
within, — for the French like to have their Houris, &c. on 
this side of Paradise, if possible. 

' Our party of fifty people (we had taken some on board 
at Gibraltar) broke upon reaching this ; never, of course, 
to meet again. The greater part do not proceed to Alex- 
andria. Considering that there was a bundle of midship- 
men, ensigns, &c., we had as much reason among us as 
could perhaps be looked for ; and from several I gained bits 
of information and traits of character, though nothing very 
remarkable-' 

' I have established myself in an inn, rather than go to 
Lady Louis's ;* not feeling quite equal to company, except 
in moderate doses. I have, however, seen her a good deal ; 
and dine there to-day, very privately, for Sir John is not 
quite well, and they will have no guests. The place, how- 
ever, is full of official banqueting, for various unimportant 
reasons. When here before, I was in much distress and 
anxiety, on my way from Rome ; and I suppose this it was 
that prevented it making the same impression on me as 
now, when it seems really the stateliest town I have ever 
seen. The architecture is generally of a corrupt Roman 
kind ; with something of the varied and picturesque look, 

* Sister of Mrs. Strachey and Mrs. Duller : Sir John Louis was now in a 
high Naval post at Malta. 



NAPLES: POEMS. 297 

^hough much more massive, of our Elizabethan buildings. 
We have the finest English summer and a pellucid sky. * * * 
Your affectionate, 

' John Sterling.' 

At Naples next, for three weeks, was due admiration of 
the sceneries and antiquities. Bay and Mountain, by no 
means forgetting Art and the Museum : ' to Pozzuoli, to 
Baise, round the Promontory of Sorrento ;' — above all, 
' twice to Pompeii, where the elegance and classic sim- 
plicity of Ancient Housekeeping strikes us much ; and 
again to Piestum, where ' the Temple of Neptune is far 
the noblest building I have ever seen ; and makes both 
Greek and Revived Roman seem quite barbaric' ' Lord 
Ponsonby lodges in the same house with me ; — but, of 
course, I do not countenance an adherent of a beaten 
Party ! ' * — Or let us take this more compendious account, 
which has much more of human in it, from an onward 
stage, ten days later : 

' To Thomas Carlyle, Mq., Chelsea, London. 

'Rome, May 13th, 1842. 

' My Dear, Carltle, — I hope I wrote to you before 
leaving England, to tell you of the necessity for my doing 
so. Though coming to Italy, there was little comfort in 
the prospect of being divided from my family, and pursuits 
which grew on me every day. However, I tried to make 
the best of it, and have gained both health and pleasure. 

* Long Letter to his Father : Naples, May 3d, 1842. 



298 JOHN STERLING. 

* In spite of scanty communications from England (owing 
to the uncertainty of mj position), a word or two concern- 
ing you and your dear Wife have reached me. Lately it 
has often occurred to me, that the sight of the Bay of Na- 
ples, of the beautiful coast from that to this place, and of 
Rome itself, all bathed in summer sunshine, and green with 
spring foliage, would be some consolation to her. Pray 
give her my love. 

' I have been two days here ; and almost the first thing I 
did was to visit the Protestant burial-ground, and the graves 
of those I knew when here before. But much as, being 
now alone here, I feel the difference, there is no scene 
where death seems so little dreadful and miserable as in 
the lonelier neighborhoods of this old place. All one's 
impressions, however, as to that and every thing else, 
appear to me on reflection more affected than I had for a 
long time any notion of, by one's own isolation. All the 
feelings and activities which family, friends and occupation 
commonly engage, are turned, here in one's solitude, with 
strange force into the channels of mere observation and 
contemplation ; and the objects one is conversant with seem 
to gain a tenfold significance from the abundance of spare 
interest one now has to bestow on them. This explains to 
me a good deal of the peculiar effect that Italy has always 
had on me ; and something of that artistic enthusiasm which 
I remember you used to think so singular in Goethe's 
Travels. Darley, who is as much a brooding hermit in 
England as here, felt nothing but disappointment from a 
country which fills me with childish wonder and delight. 

' Of you I have received some slight notice from Mrs. 
Strachey : Avho is on her way hither ; and will (she writes) 



NAPLES : POEMS. 299 

be at Florence on the 15th, and here hcfore the end of the 
month. She notices having received a letter of yours 
which had pleased her much. She now proposes spending 
the summer at Sorrento, or thereabouts ; and if mere delight 
of landscape and climate were enough, Adam and Eve, had 
their courier taken them to that region, might have done 
well enough without Paradise, — and not been tempted, 
either, by any Tree of Knowledge ; a kind that does not 
flourish in the Two Sicilies. 

' The ignorance of the Neapolitans, from the highest to 
the lowest, is very eminent ; and excites the admiration of 
all the rest of Italy. In the great building containing all 
the Works of Art, and a Library of 150,000 volumes, I 
asked for the best existing Book (a German one published 
ten years ago), on the Statues in that very Collection ; 
and, after a rabble of clerks and custodes, got up to a dirty 
priest, who bowing to the ground, regretted " they did not 
possess it," but at last remembered that " they liad entered 
into negotiations on the subject, which as yet had been un- 
successful." The favorite device on the walls of Naples is 
a vermilion Picture of a Male and Female Soul respectively 
up to the waist (the waist of a soul) in fire, and an Angel 
above each, watering the sufTerers from a watering-pot. 
This is intended to gain alms for Masses. The same popu- 
lace sits for hours on the Mole, listening to rhapsodists who 
recite Ariosto. I have seen I think, five of them all within 
a hundred yards of each other, and some sets of fiddlers to 
boot. Yet there are few parts of the world where I have 
seen less laughter than there. The Miracle of Januarius's 
Blood is, on the Avhole, my most curious experience. The 
furious entreaties, shrieks and sobs, of a set of old women, 



300 JOHN STERLING. 

yelling till the Miracle was successfully performed, are 
things never to be forgotten. 

* I spent three weeks in this most glittering of countries, 
and saw most of the usual wonders, the Psestan Temples 
being to me much the most valuable. But Pompeii and all 
that it has yielded, especially the Fresco Paintings, have 
also an infinite interest. When one considers that this pro- 
digious series of beautiful designs supphed the place of our 
common room-papers, — the wealth of poetic imagery among 
the Ancients, and the corresponding traditional variety and 
elegance of pictorial treatment, seem equally remarkable. 
The Greek and Latin Books do not give one quite so fully 
this sort of impression ; because they afford no direct meas- 
ure of the extent of their own diifusion. But these are 
ornaments*from the smaller class of decent houses in a little 
Country Town ; and the greater number of them, by the 
slightness of the execution, show very clearly that they 
were adapted to ordinary taste, and done by mere artizans. 
In general clearness, symmetry and simplicity of feeling, I 
cannot say that, on the whole, the works of Eaffaelle equal 
them ; though of course he has endless beauties such as we 
could not find unless in the great original works from which 
these sketches at Pompeii were taken. Yet with all my 
much increased reverence for the Greeks, it seems more 
plain than ever that they had hardly any thing of the pecu- 
liar devotional feeling of Christianity. 

' Rome, which I loved before above all the earth, now 
delights me more than ever ; though, at this moment, there 
is rain falling that would not discredit Oxford Street. The 
depth, sincerity and splendor that there once was in the 
semi-paganism of the Old Catholics, comes out in St. Peter's 



NAPLES : POEMS. 301 

and its dependencies, almost as grandly as does Greek and 
Roman Art in the Forum and the Vatican Galleries. I 
■wish you were here : but, at all events, hope to see you and 
your Wife once more during this summer. — Yours, 

' John Sterling.' 

At Paris, where he stopped a day and night, and gener- 
ally through his whole journey from Marseilles to Havre, 
one thing attended him : the prevailing epidemic of the 
place and year ; now gone, and nigh forgotten, as other 
influenzas are. He writes to his Father : ' I have not yet 
met a single Frenchman, who could give me any rational 
explanation ivhy they were all in such a confounded rage 
against us. Definite causes of quarrel a statesman may 
know how to deal with, inasmuch as the removal of them 
may help to settle the dispute. But it must be a puzzling 
task to negotiate about instincts ; to which class, as it seems 
to me, we must have recourse for an understanding of the 
present abhorrence which every body on the other side of 
the Channel not only feels, but makes a point to boast of, 
against the name of Britain. France is slowly arming, 
especially with steam, en attendant a more than possible 
contest, in which they reckon confidently on the eager co- 
operation of the Yankees ; as, vice versa, an American told 
me that his countrymen do on that of France. One person 

at Paris (M. whom you know) provoked me to tell 

him that " England did not want another battle of Trafiil- 
gar ; but if France did she might compel England to 
gratify her." ' — After a couple of pleasant and profitable 
months, he was safe. home again in the first days of June ; 
and saw Falmouth not under gray iron skies, and whirls of 
26 



302 JOHN STERLING. 

ISIarch dust, but bright with summer opulence and the roses 
coming out. 

It was what I call his ^ fifth peregrinitj ;' his fifth and 
last. He soon afterwards came up to London ; spent a 
couple of weeks, with all his old vivacity, among us here. 
The ^sculapian oracles, it would appear, gave altogether 
cheerful prophecy ; the highest medical authority, ' ex- 
presses the most decided opinion that I have gradually 
mended for some years ; and in truth I have not, for six or 
seven, been so free from serious symptoms of illness as at 
present.' So uncertain are all oracles ^sculapian and 
other ! 

During this visit, he made one new acquaintance which 
he much valued ; drawn thither, as I guess, by the wish to 
take counsel about Strafford. He writes to his Clifton 
friend, under date, July 1st, 1842 : ' Lockhart, of the 
Quarterly Revieiv, I made my first oral acquaintance with ; 
and found him as neat, clear and cutting a brain as you 
would expect ; but with an amount of knowledge, good 
nature and liberal anti-bigotry, that would much surprise 
many. The tone of his children towards him seemed to 
me decisive of his real kindness. He quite agreed with 
me as to the threatening seriousness of our present social 
perplexities, and the necessity and difficulty of doing some- 
thing effectual for so satisfying the manual multitude as not 
to overthrow all legal security.' 

' Of other persons whom I saw in London,' continues he, 
' there are several that would much interest you, — though 
I missed Tennyson, by a mere chance.' * * * ' John Mill 
has completely finished, and sent to the bookseller, his 
great work on Logic ; the labor of many years of a singu- 



NAPLES: POEMS. 303 

larly subtle, patient and comprehensive mind. It will be 
our chief speculative monument of this age. Mill and I 
could not meet above two or three times ; but it was with 
the openness and freshness of schoolboy friends, though our 
friendship only dates from the manhood of both.' 

He himself was busier than ever ; occupied continually 
with all manner of Poetic interests. Coeiir-de-Lion, a new 
and more elaborate attempt in the mock-heroic or comico- 
didactic vein, had been on hand for some time, the scope of 
it greatly deepening and expanding itself since it first took 
hold of him ; and now, soon after the Naples journey, it rose 
into shape on the wider plan ; shaken up probably by this 
new excitement, and indebted to Calabria, Palermo and the 
Mediterranean scenes for much of the vesture it had. With 
this, which opened higher hopes for him than any of his 
previous efforts, he was now employing all his time and 
strength ; — and continued to do so, this being the last effort 
granted him among us. 

Already, for some months, Strafford lay complete : but 
how to get it from the stocks ; in what method to launch it ? 
The step was questionable. Before going to Italy he had 
sent me the Manuscript; still loyal and friendly; and 
willing to hear the worst that could be said of his poetic 
enterprise. I had to afflict him again, the good brave soul, 
with the deliberate report that I could not accept this 
Drama as his Picture of the Life of Strafford, or as any 
Picture of that strange Fact. To which he answered, with 
an honest manfulness, in a tone which is now pathetic 
enough to me, that he Avas much grieved yet much obliged, 
and uncertain how to decide. On the other hand, Mr. 
Hare wrote, warmly eulogizing. Lockhart too spoke kindly, 



304 JOHN STERLING. 

though taking some exceptions. It was a questionable 
case. On the whole, Strafford remained, for the present, 
unlaunchcd ; and Cceur-de-Lion was getting its first timbers 
diligently laid down. So passed, in peaceable seclusion, in 
wholesome emploj^ent and endeavor, the autumn and 
winter of 1842-3. On Christmas-day, he reports to his 
Mother : 

' I wished to write to you yesterday ; but was prevented 
by the important business of preparing a Tree, in the Ger- 
man fashion, for the children. This project answered per- 
fectly, as it did last year ; and gave them the greatest 
pleasure. I wish you and my Father could have been here 
to see their merry faces. Johnny was in the thick of the 
fun, and much happier than Lord Anson on capturing the 
galleon. We are all going on well and quietly, but with 
nothing very new among us.' — ' The last book I have lighted 
on is Moffat's Misdonai'y Labors in South Africa; which 
is worth reading. There is the best collection of lion stories 
in it that I have ever seen. But the man is, also, really a 
very good fellow ; and fit for something much better than 
most lions are. He is very ignorant, and mistaken in some 
things ; but has strong sense and heart ; and his Narrative 
adds another to the many proofs of the enormous power of 
Christianity on rude minds. Nothing can be more chaotic, 
that is human at all, than the notions of these poor Blacks, 
even after what is called their conversion'; but the effect 
is produced. They do adopt pantaloons, and abandon poly- 
gamy ; and I suppose will soon have newspapers and literary 
soirees.' 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 305 



CHAPTER XII. 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 



During all these years of struggle and ■wayfaring, his 
Father's household at Knightsbridge had stood healthful, 
happy, increasing in wealth, free diligence, solidity and 
honest prosperity ; a fixed sunny islet, towards which, in 
all his voyagings and overclouded roamings, he could look 
with satisfaction, as to an ever-open port of refuge. 

The elder Sterling, after many battles, had reached his 
field of conquest in these years ; and was to be regarded as 
a victorious man. Wealth sufiicient, increasing not dimin- 
ishing, had rewarded his labors in the Times, which were 
now in their full flower ; he had influence of a sort ; went 
busily among busy public men ; and enjoyed, in the ques- 
tionable form attached to journalism and anonymity, a social 
consideration and position which were abundantly grati- 
fying to him. A singular figure of the epoch ; and when 
you came to know him, which it was easy to fail of doing 
if you had not eyes and candid insight, a gallant, truly 
gifted, and manful figure, of his kind. We saw much of 
him in this house ; much of all his family ; and had grown 
to love them all right well, — him too, though that was the 
difiicult part of the feat. For in his Irish way he played 
the conjuror very much, — " three hundred and sixty-five 
26* 



306 JOHN STERLING. 

opinions in the year upon every subject," as a wag once 
said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic and spirited 
in detail, was much defective in earnestness, at least in 
clear earnestness, of purport and outcome ; but went tum- 
bling as if in mere welters of explosive unreason ; a volcano 
heaving under vague deluges of scoriae, ashes and impon- 
derous pumice-stones, you could not say in what direction, 
nor well whether in any. Not till after good study did 
you see the deep molten lava-flood, which simmered steadily 
enough, and shewed very well by and by whither it was 
bound. For I must say of Edward Sterling, after all his 
daily explosive sophistries, and fallacies of talk, he had a 
stubborn instinctive sense of what was manful, strong and 
worthy ; recognized, with quick feeling, the charlatan under 
his solemnest wig ; knew as clearly as any man a pusillani- 
mous tailor in buckram, an ass under the lion's skin, and 
did with his whole heart despise the same. 

The sudden changes of doctrine in the Times, which 
failed not to excite loud censure and indignant amazement 
in those days, were first intelligible to you Avhen you came 
to interpret them as his changes. These sudden whirls 
from east to west on his part, and total changes of party 
and articulate opinion at a day's warning, lay in tbe nature 
of the man, and could not be helped ; products of his fiery 
impatience, of the combined impetuosity and limitation of 
an intellect, which did nevertheless continually gravitate 
towards what was loyal, true and right on all manner of 
subjects. These, as I define them, were the mere scoriae 
and pumice wreck of a steady central lava-flood, which truly 
was volcanic and explosive to a strange degree, but did 
rest as few others on the grand fire-depths of the world. 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 307 

Thus, if he stormed along, ten thousand strong, in the time 
of the Reform Bill, indignantly denouncing Toryism and its 
obsolete insane pretensions ; and then if, after some experi- 
ence of Whig management, he discerned that Wellington 
and Peel, by whatever name entitled, were the men to be 
depended on by England, — there lay in all this, visible 
enough, a deeper consistency far more important than the 
superficial one, so much clamored after by the vulgar. 
Which is the lion's-skin ; which is the real lion ? Let a man, 
if he is prudent, ascertain that before speaking; — but 
above and beyond all things, let him ascertain it, and stand 
valiantly to it when ascertained ! In the latter essential 
part of the operation Edward Sterling was honorably suc- 
cessful to a really marked degree ; in -the former, or 
prudential part, very much the reverse, as his history in 
the Journalistic department at least, was continually teach- 
ing him. 

An amazingly impetuous, hasty, explosive man, this 
'• Captain Whirlwind," as I used to call him? Great sen- 
sibility lay in him, too ; a real sympathy, and affectionate 
pity and softness, which he had an over-tendency to express 
even by tears, — a singular sight in so leonine a man. Ene- 
mies called them maudlin and hypocritical, these tears ; 
but that was nowise the complete account of them. On the 
whole, there did conspicuously lie a dash of ostentation, a 
self-consciousness apt to become loud and braggart, over all 
he said and did and felt : this was the alloy of the man, 
and you had to be thankful for the abundant gold • along 
with it. 

Quizzing enough he got among us for all this, and for 
the singular chiaroscuro manner of procedure, like that of 



308 JOHN STERLING. 

an Arcliimagus Cagliostro, or Kaiser Joseph Incognito, 
which his anonymous known-unknown thunderings in the 
Times necessitated in him ; and much we laughed, — not 
without explosive counter-banterings on his part ; — but in 
fine one could not do without him ; one knew him at heart 
for a right brave man. " By Jove, sir ! " thus he would 
swear to you, with radiant face ; sometimes, not often, by a 
deeper oath. With persons of dignity, especially with 
women, to whom he was always very gallant, he had 
courtly delicate manners, verging to\Yard3 the wiredrawn 
and elaborate ; on common occasions, he bloomed out at 
once into jolly familiarity of the gracefully boisterous kind, 
reminding you of mess-rooms and old Dublin days. His off 
hand mode of speech was always precise, emphatic, ingeni- 
ous ; his laugh which was frequent rather than otherwise, 
had a sincerity of banter, but no real depth of sense for the 
ludicrous : and soon ended, if it grew too loud, in a mere 
dissonant scream. He was broad, well-built, stout of 
stature ; had a long lowish head, sharp gray eyes, with 
large strong aquiline face to match ; and walked, or sat, in 
an erect decisive manner. A remarkable man ; and play- 
ing, especially in those years 1830-40, a remarkable part 
in the world. 

For it may be said, the emphatic, big-voiced, always 
influential and often strongly unreasonable Times News- 
paper, was the express emblem of Edward Sterhng ; he 
more than any other man or circumstance, ivas the Times 
Newspaper, and thundered through it to the shaking of the 
spheres. And let us assert withal that his and its influ- 
ence, in those days, was not ill grounded but rather well ; 
that the loud manifold unreason, often enough vituperated 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 309 

and groaned over, -was of the surface mostly ; that his con- 
clusions, unreasonable, partial, hasty as they might at first 
be, gravitated irresistably towards the right : in virtue of 
■which grand quality indeed, the root of all good insight in 
man, his Times oratory found acceptance, and influential 
audience, amid the loud whirl of an England itself logically 
very stupid, and wise chiefly by instinct. 

England listened to this voice, as all might observe ; and 
to one who knew England and it, the result was not quite 
a strange one, and was honorable rather than otherwise to 
both parties. A good judge of men's talents has been 
heard to say of Edward Sterling : " There is not a faculty 
of improvising equal to this in all my circle. Sterling 
rushes out into the clubs, into London society, rolls about 
all day, copiously talking modish nonsense or sense, and 
listening to the like, with the multifarious miscellany of 
men ; comes home at night ; redacts it into a Times 
Leader, — and is found to have hit the essential purport of 
the world's immeasurable babblement that day, with an ac- 
curacy beyond all other men. This is what the multifarious 
Babel sound did mean to say in clear words ; this, more 
nearly than any thing else. Let the most gifted intellect, 
capable of writing epics, try to write such a Leader for the 
Morning Newspapers ! No intellect but Edward Sterhng's 
can do it. An improvising faculty without parallel in my 
experience." — In this ' improvising faculty,' much more 
nobly developed, as well as in other faculties and qualities 
with unexpectedly new and improved figure, John Sterling, 
to the accurate observer, shewed himself very much the 
son of Edward. 

Connected with this matter, a remarkable Note has 



SIO JOHN STERLING. 

come into mj hands ; honorable to the man I am Avritlng 
of, and in some sort to another higher man ; which, as it 
maj now (unhappily for us all) be published without scru- 
ple, I will not withhold here. The support, by Edward 
Sterling and the Times, of Sir Robert Peel's first Ministry, 
and generally of Peel's statesmanship, was a conspicuous 
fact in its day ; but the return it met with from the person 
chiefly interested may be considered well worth recording. 
The following Letter, after meandering through I know not 
what intricate conduits, and consultations of the Mysterious 
Entity whose address it bore, came to Edward Sterling as 
the real flesh-and-blood proprietor, and has been found 
among his papers. It is marked Private : 

' (Private) To the Editor of the Times. 

Whitehall, April 18th, 1835. 

' Sir, — Having this day delivered into the hands of the 
King the Seals of Office, I can, without any imputation of 
an interested motive, or any impediment from scrupulous 
feelings of delicacy, express my deep sense of the powerful 
support Avhich that Government over which I had the honor 
to preside received from the Times Newspaper. 

' If I do not offer the expressions of personal gratitude, 
it is because I feel that such expressions would do injustice 
to the character of a support which was given exclusively 
on the highest and most independent grounds of public 
principle. I can say this with perfect truth, as I am 
addressing one whose person even is unknown to me, and 
who during my tenure of Power studiously avoided every 
species of intercourse which could throw a suspicion upon 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 311 

the motives by which he was actuated. I should, however, 
be doing injustice to my own feelings, if I were to retire 
from Office wiihout one word of acknowledgment ; without 
at least assuring you of the admiration with which I wit- 
nessed, during the arduous contest in which I was engaged, 
the daily exhibition of that extraordinary ability to which I 
was indebted for a support, the more valuable because it 
was an impartial and discriminating support. — I have the 
honor to be, Sir, — Ever your most obedient and faithful 
servant, ' Robert Peel.' 

To Avhich, with due loftiness and diplomatic gravity and 
brevity, there is Answer, Draught of Answer in Edward 
Sterling's hand, from the Mysterious Entity so honored, in 
the following terms : 

' To the Right Eon. Sir Robert Peel Bart. ^c. ^c. §-c. 

' Sir, — It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn from the 
Letter with which you have honored me', bearing yester- 
day's date, that you estimate so highly the efforts which 
have been made during the last five months by the Times 
Newspaper, to support the cause of rational and wholesome 
Government which his Majesty had entrusted to your guid- 
ance ; and that you appreciate fairly the disinterested 
motive, of regard to the public welfare, and to that alone, 
through which this Journal has been prompted to pursue a 
policy in accordance with that of your Administration. It 
is, permit me to say, by such motives only, that the Times, 
ever since I have known it, has been influenced, whether in 
defence of the Government of the day, or in constitutional 



312 JOHN STERLING. 

resistance to it ; and indeed there exist no other motives of 
action for a Journahst, compatible either with the safety of 
the press, or with the pohtical morahty of the great bulk 
of its readers. — With much respect, I have the honor to be, 
Sir, &c. &c. &c. ' The Editor of the " Times" ' 

Of this Note, I do not think there was the least whisper 
during Edward Sterling's lifetime ; which fact also one 
likes to remember of him, so ostentatious and little reticent 
a man. For the rest, his loyal admiration of Sir Robert 
Peel, — sanctioned, and as it were almost consecrated to his 
mind, by the great example of the Duke of Wellington, 
whom he reverenced always with true hero-worship, — was not 
a journalistic one, but a most intimate authentic feeling, 
sufficiently apparent in the very heart of his mind. Among 
the many opinions ' liable to three hundred and sixty-j5ve 
changes in the course of the year,' this in reference to Peel 
and Wellington was one which never changed, but was the 
same all days and hours. To which, equally genuine, and 
coming still oftener to light in those times, there might one 
other be added, one and hardly more : fixed contempt, not 
unmingled with detestation, for Daniel O'Connell. This 
latter feeling, we used often laughingly to say, was his 
grand political principle, the one firm centre where all else 
went revolving. But internally the other also was deep 
and constant ; and indeed these were properly his two 
centres, — poles of the same axis, negative and positive, the 
one presupposing the other. 

O'Connell he had known in young Dublin days ; — and 
surely no man could well venerate another less ! It was- 
his deliberate, unalterable opinion of the then Great 0, that 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 313 

good would never come of him ; that only mischief, and 
this in huge measure, would come. That however shewy, 
and adroit ia rhetoric and management, he was a man of 
incurably commonplace intellect, and of no character but a 
hollow, blustery, pusillanimous and unsound one ; great 
only in maudlin patriotisms, in speciosities, astucities, — in 
the miserable gifts for becoming Chief Demagogos^ Leader 
af a deep-sunk Populace towards its Lands of Promise ; 
which trade in any age or country, and especially in the 
Ireland of this age, our indignant friend regarded (and 
with reason) as an extremely ugly one for a man. He had 
himself zealously advocated Catholic Emancipation, and 
was not without his Irish patriotism, very different from 
the Orange sort; but the 'Liberator' was not admirable 
to him, and grew daily less so to an extreme degree. 
Truly, his scorn of the said Liberator, now riding in su- 
preme dominion on the wings of blarney^ devil-ward of a 
surety, with the Liberated all following and huzzaing ; his 
fierce gusts of wrath and abhorrence over him, rose, occa- 
sionally almost to the sublime. We laughed often at these 
vehemences : — and they were not wholly laughable ; there 
was something very serious, and very true, in them ! This 
creed of Edward Sterling's would not now, in either pole 
of its axis, look so strange as it then did in many quarters. 
During those ten years which might be defined as the 
culminating period of Edward Sterling's life, his house at 
South Place, Knightsbridge, had worn a gay and solid as- 
pect, as if built at last on the high table-land of sunshine 
and success, the region of storms and dark weather now all 
victoriously traversed and lying safe below. Health, work, 
wages, whatever is needful to a man, he had, in rich meas- 
27 



314 JOHN STERLING. 

ure : and a frank stout heart to guide the same ; lived in 
such style as pleased him ; drove his own chariot up and 
down (himself often acting as Jehu, and reminding you a 
little of Times thunder even in driving ;) consorted, after 
a fashion, with the powerful of the Avorld ; saw in due vicis- 
situde a miscellany of social faces round him, — pleasant 
parties, which he liked well enough to garnish by a lord ; 
" Irish lord, if no better might be," as the banter went. 
For the rest, he loved men of worth and intellect, and 
recognized them well whatever their title : this was his 
own patent of worth which Nature had given him ; a cen- 
tral light in the man, which illuminated into a kind of 
beauty, serious or humorous, all the artificialities he had 
accumulated on the surface of him. So rolled his days, 
not quietly, yet prosperously, in manifold commerce with 
men. At one in the morning, when all had vanished into 
sleep, his lamp was kindled in his library ; and there, 
twice or thrice a week, for a three hours' space, he launch- 
ed his bolts, which next morning were to shake the high 
places of the world. 

John's relation to his Father, when one saw John here, 
was altogether frank, joyful and amiable : he ignored the 
Times thunder for most part, coldly taking the Anonymous 
for non-extant ; spoke of it floutingly, if he spoke at all : 
indeed a pleasant half-bantering dialact was the common 
one between Father and Son ; and they, especially with 
the gentle, simple-hearted, just-minded Mother for treble- 
voice between them, made a very pretty glee harmony 
together. 

So had it lasted, ever since poor John's voyagings 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 315 

began ; his Father's house standing always as a fixed 
sunny islet, with safe harbor for him. So it could not 
always last. This sunny islet Avas now also to break and 
go down : so many firm islets, fixed pillars in his fluctu- 
ating world, pillar after pillar, were to break and go down ; 
till swiftly all, so to speak, were sunk in the dark waters, 
and he with them ! Our little History is now hastening to 
a close. 

In the beginning of 1843, news reached us that Sterling 
had, in his too reckless way, encountered a dangerous 
accident : maids, in the room where he was, were lifting a 
heavy table ; he, seeing them in difficulty, had snatched at 
the burden ; heaved it away, — but broken a bloodvessel by 
the business ; and was now, after extensive hemorrhage, 
lying dangerously ill. The doctors hoped the worst was 
over ; but the case was evidently serious. In the same 
days too, his Mother had been seized here by some painful 
disease, which from its continuance grew alarming. Sad 
omens for Edward Sterling, who by this time had as good 
as ceased writing or working in the Times, having comfort- 
ably winded up his affairs there ; and was looking forward 
to a freer idle life befitting his advanced years henceforth. 
Fatal eclipse had fallen over that household of his ; never 
to be lifted off again till all darkened into night. 

By dint of watchful nursing, John Sterling got on foot 
once more ; but his Mother did not recover, quite the 
contrary. Her case too grew very questionable. Disease 
of the heart, said the medical men at last ; not immediately, 
not perhaps for a length of years, dangerous to life, said 
they ; but without hope of cure. The poor lady suffered 



316 JOHN STERLING. 

much ; and though affecting hope always, grew weaker 
and weaker. John ran up to Town in March ; I saw him, 
on the morrow or next day after, in his own room at 
Knightsbridge : he had caught fresh cold over night, the 
servant having left his window up, but I was charged to 
say nothing of it, not to flutter the already troubled house : 
he was going home again that very day, and nothing ill 
would come of it. We understood the family at Falmouth, 
his Wife being now near her confinement again, could at 
any rate comport with no long absence. He was cheerful, 
even rudely merry ; himself pale and ill, his poor Mother's 
cough audible occasionally through the wall. Very kind, 
too, and gracefully affectionate ; but I observed a certain 
grimness in his mood of mind, and under his light laughter 
lay something unusual, something stern, as if already 
dimmed in the coming shadows of Fate. " Yes, yes, you 
are a good man : but I understand they mean to appoint 
you to Rhadamanthus's post, which has been vacant for 
some time ; and you will see how you like that ! " This 
was one of the things he said ; a strange effulgence of wild 
drollery flashing through the ice of earnest pain and 
sorrow. He looked paler than usual : almost for the first 
time, I had myself a twinge of misgiving as to his own 
health ; for hitherto I had been used to blame as much as 
pity his fits of dangerous illness, and would often angrily 
remonstrate with him that he might have excellent health, 
would he but take reasonable care of himself, and learn 
the art of sitting still. Alas, as if he could learn it ; as if 
Nature had not laid her ban on him even there, and said 
in smiles and frowns manifoldly, " No, that thou shalt not 
learn ! ' ' 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 317 

He went that day ; he never saw his good true Mother 
more. Very shortly afterwards, in spite of doctors' 
prophecies, and aflfectionate illusions, she grew alarmingly 
and soon hopelessly worse. Here are his two last Letters 
to her : 

* To Mrs. Sterling, Kniglitsbridge, London. 

' Falmouth, April 8th, 1843. 

* Dearest Mother, — I could do you no good, but it 
would be the greatest comfort to me if I could be near 
you. Nothing would detain me but Susan's condition. I 
feel that until her confinement is over, I ought to remain 
here, — unless you wished me to go to you ; in which case 
she would be the first to send me off. Happily she is doing 
as well as possible, and seems even to gain strength every 
day. She sends her love to you. 

' The children are all doing well. I rode with Edward 
to-day, through some of the pleasant lanes in the neighbor- 
hood ; and was delighted, as I have often been at the same 
season, to see the primroses under every hedge. It is 
pleasant to think that the Maker of them can make other 
flowers for the gardens of his other mansions. We have 
here a softness in the air, a smoothness of the clouds, and 
a mild sunshine, that combine in lovely peace with the first 
green of spring and the mellow whiteness of the sails upon 
the quiet sea. The whole aspect of the world is full of a 
quiet harmony, that influences even one's bodily frame, 
and seems to make one's very limbs aware of something 
living, good and immortal in all around us. Knowing how 
you suffer, and how weak you are, any thing is a blessing 
27* 



318 JOHN STERLING. 

• 

to me that helps me to rise out of confusion and grief into 
the sense of God and joj. I could not indeed but feel how 
much happier I should have been, this morning, had jou 
been with me, and delighting as you would have done in all 
the little as well as the large beauty of the worlds But it 
was still a Satisfaction to feel how much I owe to you of the 
power of perceiving meaning, reality and sweetness in all 
healthful life. And thus I could fancy that you were still 
near me ; and that I could see you, as I have so often seen 
you, looking with earnest eyes at wayside flowers. 

' I would rather not have written what must recall your 
thoughts to your present sufferings ; but, dear Mother, I 
wrote only what I felt ; and perhaps you would rather have 
it so, than that I should try to find other topics. I still 
hope to be with you before long. Meanwhile and always, 
God bless you, is the prayer of — 

Your affectionate son, 

' John Sterling.' 

To the Same. 

" Falmouth, April 12th, 1843. ' 

' Dearest Mother, — I have just received my Father's 
Letter ; which gives me at least the comfort of believing 
that you do not suffer very much pain. That your mind 
has remained so clear and strong, is an infinite blessing. 

' I do not know any thing in the world that would make 
up to me at all for wanting the recollection of the days I 
spent with you lately, when I was amazed at the freshness 
and life of all your thoughts. It brought back far-distant 
years, in the strangest, most peaceful way. I felt myself 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 319 

walking -with you in Greenwich Park, and on the sea-shore 
at Sandgate ; almost even I seemed a baby with you bend- 
ing over me. Dear Mother, there is surely something 
uniting us that cannot perish. I geem so sure of a love 
which shall last and reunite us, that even the remembrance, 
painful as that is, of all my own follies and SI tempers, 
cannot shake this faith. When I think of you, and know 
how you feel towards me, and have felt for every moment 
of almost forty years, it would be too dark to believe that 
we shall never meet again. It was from you that I first 
learnt to think, to feel, to imagine, to believe ; and these 
powers, which eonnot be extinguished, Avill one day enter 
anew into communion with you. I have bought it very 
dear by the prospect of losing you in this world, — but 
since you have been so ill, every thing has seemed to me 
holier, loftier and more lasting, more full of hope and final 

joy. 

* It would be a very great happiness to see you once 
more even here ; but I do not know if that will be granted 
to me. But for Susan's state, I should not hesitate an 
instant ; as it is, my duty seems to be to remain, and I 
have no right to repine. There is no sacrifice that she 
would not make for me, and it would be too cruel to en- 
danger her by mere anxiety on my account. Nothing can 
exceed her sympathy with my sorrow. But she cannot 
know, no one can, the recollections of all you have been 
and done for me ; which now are the most sacred and 
deepest, as well as most beautiful thoughts that abide with 
me. May God bless you, dearest Mother. It is much to 
believe that He feels for you all that you have ever^felt for 
your children. 

' John Sterling.' 



320 JOHN STERLING. 

A day or two after this, ' on Good Friday, 1843,' his 
Wife got happily through her confinement, bringing him, 
he writes, ' a stout Mttle girl, -who and the Mother are 
doing as well as possible.' The little girl still lives and 
does well ; but for the Mother there was another lot. Till 
the Monday, following she too did altogether well, he affec- 
tionately watching her; but in the course of that day, 
some change for the worse was noticed, though nothing to 
alarm either the doctors or him ; he watched by her bed- 
side all night, still without alarm ; but sent again in the 
morning, Tuesday morning, for the doctors, — who did not 
seem able to make much of the symptoms. She appeared 
weak and low, but made no particular complaint. The 
London post meanwhile was announced ; Sterling went 
into another room to learn what tidings of his Mother it 
brought him. Returning speedily with a face which in 
vain strove to be calm, his Wife asked. How at Knights- 
bridge ? " My Mother is dead," answered Sterling ; 
" died on Sunday : she is gone." — " Poor old man ! " 
murmured the other, thinking of old Edward Sterling now 
left alone in the world ; and these were her own last words : 
in two hours more she too was dead. In two hour^ 
Mother and Wife were suddenly both snatched away from 
him. 

' It came with awful suddenness ! ' writes he to his 
Clifton friend. ' Still for a short time I had my Susan : 
but I soon saw that the medical men were in terror ; and 
almost within half an hour of that fatal Knightsbridge news, 
I began to suspect our own pressing danger. I received 
her last breath upon my lips. Her mind was much sunk, 
and her perceptions slow ; but a few minutes before the 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 321 

last, she must have caught the idea of dissolution ; and 
signed that I should kiss her. She faltered painfully ; 
" Yes ! yes !" — returned with fervency the pressure of my 
lips ; and in a few moments her eyes began to fix, her 
pulse to cease.' She too is-gone from me ! It was Tues- 
day morning, April 18th, 1843. His Mother had died on 
the Sunday before. 

He had loved his excellent kind Mother, as he ought 
and well might : in that good heart, in all the wanderings 
of his own, there had ever been a shrine of warm pity, of 
mother's love and blessed soft affections for him ; and now 
it was closed in the Eternities forevermore. His poor Life- 
partner too, his other self, who had faithfully attended him 
so long in all his pilgrimings, cheerily footing the heavy 
tortuous ways along with him, can follow him no farther ; 
sinks now at his side : " The rest of your pilgrimings alone, 
Friend, — adieu, adieu !" She too is forever hidden from 
his eyes ; and he stands, on the sudden, very solitary amid 
the tumult of fallen and falling things. ' My little baby 
girl is doing well ; poor little wreck cast upon the seabeach 
of life. My children require me tenfold now. What I 
shall do, is all confusion and darkness.' 

The younger Mrs. Sterling was a true good woman ; 
loyal-hearted, willing to do well, and struggling wonderfully 
to do it amid her languors and infirmities ; rescuing, in 
many ways, with beautiful female heroism and adroitness, 
what of fertility their uncertain, wandering, unfertile way 
of life still left possible, and cheerily making the most of it. 
A genial, pious and harmonious fund of character was in 
her ; and withal an indolent, half unconscious force of 



322 JOHN STERLING. 

intellect, and justness and delicacy of perception, -which the 
casual acquaintance scarcely gave her credit for. Sterling 
much respected her decision in matters literary ; often 
altering and modifying -where her feeling clearly went 
against him ; and in verses especially trusting to her ear, 
•which was excellent, -while he knew his own to be -worth 
little. I remember her melodious rich plaintive tone of 
voice ; and an exceedingly bright smile which she some- 
times had, effulgent -with sunny gayety and true humor, 
among other fine qualities. 

Sterling has lost much in these two hours ; how much 
that has long been can never again be for him ! Twice in 
one morning, so to speak, has a mighty wind smitten the 
corners of his house ; and much lies in dismal ruins round 
him. 



VENTNOR : DEATH. 823 



CHAPTER XIII. 



VENTNOR: DEATH. 



In this sudden avalanche of sorrows Sterling, weak and 
"worn as we have seen, bore up manfully, and with pious 
valor fronted what had come upon him. He was not a man 
to yield to vain wailings, or make repinings at the unalter- 
able : here was enough to be long mourned over ; but here, 
for the moment, was very much imperatively requiring to 
be done. That evening, he called his children round him ; 
spoke words of religious admonition and affection to them : 
said, " He must now be a Mother as well as Father to 
them." On the evening of the funeral, writes Mr. Hare, 
he bade them good night, adding these words, " If I am 
taken from you, God will take care of you." He had six 
children left to his charge, two of them infants : and a dark 
outlook ahead of them and him. The good Mrs. Maurice, 
the children's young Aunt, present at this time and often 
afterwards till all ended, was a great consolation. 

Falmouth, it may be supposed, had grown a sorrowful 
place to him, peopled with haggard memories in his weak 
state ; and now again, as had been usual with him, change 
of place suggested itself as a desirable alleviation ; — and 
indeed, in some sort, as a necessity. He has ' friends 
here,' he admits to himself, ' whose kindness is beyond all 



324 JOHN STERLING. 

price, all description ;' but his little children, if any thing 
befell him, have no relative within two hundred miles. He 
is now sole watcher over them ; and his very life is so pre- 
carious ; nay, at any rate, it would appear, he has to leave 
Ealmouth every spring, or run the hazard of worse. Once 
more, what is to be done ? Once more, — and now, as it 
turned out, for the last time. 

A still gentler climate, greater proximity to London 
where his brother Anthony now was and most of his friends 
and interests were : these considerations recommended 
Ventnor, in the beautiful Southeastern corner of the Isle 
of Wight ; where on inquiry an eligible house was found 
for sale. The house and its surrounding piece of ground, 
improvable both, were purchased ; he removed thither in 
June of this year 1843 ; and set about improvements and 
adjustments on a frank scale. By the decease of his 
Mother, he had become rich in money ; his share of .the 
West-India properties having now fallen to him, which 
added to his former incomings, made a revenue he could 
consider ample and abundant. Falmouth friends looked 
lovingly towards him, promising occasional visits ; old Ilerst- 
monceux, which he often spoke of revisiting but never did, 
was not far off; and London with all its resources and re- 
membrances was now again accessible. He resumed his 
work ; and had hopes of again achieving something. 

The Poem of Cceur-de-Lion has been already mentioned, 
and the wider form and aim it had got since he first took it 
in hand. It was above a year before the date of these 
tragedies and changes, that he had sent me a Canto, or 
couple of Cantos, of Coeur-de-Lion ; loyally again demand- 
ing my opinion, harsh as it had often been on that side. 



VENTNOR : DEATH. 325 

This time I felb right glad to answer in another tone : 
" That here was real felicity and ingenuity, on the pre- 
scribed conditions ; a decisively rhythmic quality in this 
composition ; thought and phraseology actually dancing, 
after a sort. What the plan and scope of the Work might 
be, he had not said, and I could not judge ; but here was 
a light opulence of airy fancy, picturesque conception, vig- 
orous delineation, all marching on as with cheerful drum 
and fife, if without more rich and complicated forms of 
melody : if a man ivoidd write in metre, this sure enough 
Avas the way to try doing it." For such encouragement, 
from that stinted quarter, Sterling, I doubt not, was very 
thankful ; and of course it might cooperate with the inspi- 
rations from his Naples Tour to further him a little in this 
his now chief task in the way of Poetry ; a thought which, 
among my many almost pathetic remembrances of contra- 
dictions to his Poetic tendency, is pleasant for me. 

But on the whole, it was no matter. With or without 
eticouragement, he was resolute to persevere in Poetry, and 
did persevere. When I think now of his modest, quiet 
steadfastness in this business of Poetry ; how, in spite of 
friend and foe, he silently persisted, without wavering, in 
the form of utterance he had chosen for himself; and to 
what length he carried it, and vindicated himself against us 
all, — his character comes out in a new light to me, with 
more of a certain central inflexibility and noble silent reso- 
lution than I had elsewhere noticed in it. This summer, 
moved by natural feelings, which were sanctioned, too, and 
in a sort sanctified to him, by the remembered counsel of 
his late Wife, he printed the Tragedy of Strafford. But 
there was in the public no contradiction to the hard vote I 
23 



326 JOHN STERLING. 

had given about it : the Httle Book fell dead-born ; and 
Sterling had again to take his disappointment : — which it 
must be owned he cheerfully did ; and, resolute to try it 
again and ever again, went along with his Coeur-de-Lion, 
as if the public had been all Avith him. An honorable 
capacity to stand single against the whole world ; such as 
all men need, from time to time ! After all, who knows 
whether, in his overclouded, broken, flighty way of life, 
incapable of long hard drudgery, and so shut out from the 
solid forms of Prose, this Poetic Form, which he could well 
learn as he could all forms, was not the suitablest for him ? 

This work of Ccew-de-Lion he prosecuted steadfastly in 
his new home ; and indeed employed on it henceforth all 
the available days that were left hira in this world. As 
was already said, he did not live to complete it ; but some 
eight Cantos, three or four of which I know to possess high 
•worth, were finished, before Death intervened, and there 
he had to leave it. Perhaps it will yet be given to the 
public ; and in that case be better received than the others 
were, by men of judgment ; and serve to put Sterling's 
Poetic pretensions on a much truer footing. I can say, 
that to readers who do prefer a poetic diet, this ought to 
be welcome : if you can contrive to love the thing which is 
still called " poetry" in these days, here is a decidedly 
superior article in that kind, — richer than one of a hundred 
that you smilingly consume. 

In this same month of June 1843, while the house at 
Ventnor was getting ready, Sterling was again in London 
for a few days. Of course at Knightsbridge, now fallen 
under such sad change, many private matters needed to be 
settled by his Father and Brother and him. Captain An- 



ventnor: death. 



32T 



thony, now minded to remove with his family to London 
and quit the military way of life, had agreed to purchase 
the big family house, which he still occupies ; the old man, 
now rid of that incumbrance, retired to a smaller establish- 
ment of his own ; — came ultimately to be Anthony's guest, 
and spent his last days so. He was much lamed and bro- 
ken, the half of his old life suddenly torn away ; — and other 
losses, which he yet knew not of, lay close ahead of him. 
In a year or two, the rugged old man, borne down by 
these pressures, quite gave way ; sank into paralytic and 
other infirmities ; and was released from life's sorrows, 
under his son Anthony's roof, in the fall of 1847. — The 
house in Knightsbridge was, at the time we now speak of, 
empty except of servants ; Anthony having returned to 
Dublin, I suppose to conclude his affairs there, prior to re- 
moval. John lodged in a Hotel. 

"We had our fair share of his company in this visit, as in 
all the past ones ; but the intercourse, I recollect, Avas dim 
and broken, a disastrous shadow hanging over it, not to be 
cleared away by effort. Two American gentlemen, ac- 
quaintances also of mine, had been recommended to him, 
by Emerson most likely : one morning Sterling appeared 
here with a strenuous proposal that we should come to 
Knightsbridge, and dine with him and them. Objections, 
general dissuasions were not wanting : The empty dark 
house, such needless trouble, and the like ; — but he an- 
swered in his quizzing way, " Nature herself prompts you, 
when a stranger comes, to give him a dinner. There are 
servants yonder ; it is all easy ; come ; both of you are 
bound to come." And accordingly we went. I remember 
it as one of the saddest dinners ; though Sterling talked 



328 JOHN STERLING. 

copiously, and our friends, Theodore Parker one of them, 
were pleasant and distinguished men. All was so haggard 
in one's memory, and half-consciously in one's anticipations ; 
sad, as if one had been dining in a ruin, in the crypt of a 
mausoleum. Our conversation was waste and logical, I 
forget quite on what, not joyful and harmoniously effusive ; 
Sterling's silent sadness was painfully apparent through the 
bright mask he had bound himself to wear. Withal one 
could notice now, as on his last visit, a certain sternness of 
mood, unknown in better days ; as if strange gorgon-faces 
of earnest Destiny were more and more rising round him, 
and the time for sport were past. lie looked always hur- 
ried, abrupt, even beyond wont ; and indeed was, I sup- 
pose, overwhelmed in details of business. 

One evening, I remember he came down hither, design- 
ing to have a freer talk with us. We were all sad enough ; 
and strove rather to avoid speaking of Avhat might make us 
sadder. Before any true talk had been got into, an inter- 
ruption occurred, some unwelcome arrival: Sterling ab- 
ruptly rose ; gave me the signal to rise ; and we unpolitely 
walked away, adjourning to his Hotel, which I recollect 
was in the Strand, near Hungerford Market ; some ancient 
comfortable quaint-looking place, off the street ; where, in 
a good warm queer old room, the remainder of our colloquy 
was duly finished. We spoke of Cromwell, among other 
things which I have now forgotten ; on which subject Ster- 
ling was trenchant, positive, and in some essential points, 
wrong, — as I said I would convince him some day. " Well, 
well !" answered he, with a shake of the head. — We parted- 
before long ; bedtime for invalids being come : he escorted 
me down certain carpeted backstairs, and would not be for- 



VENTNOR : DEATH. 829 

bidden : we took leave under the dim skies ; and alas, little 
as I then dreamt of it, this, so far as I can calculate, must 
have been the last time I ever saw him in the world. 
Softly as a common evening, the last of the evenings had 
passed away, and no other would come for me forevermore. 
Through the summer he was occupied with fitting up his 
new residence, selecting governess, servants ; earnestly 
endeavoring to set his house in order, on the new footing it 
had now assumed. Extensive improvements in his garden 
and grounds, in* which he took due interest to the last, were 
also going on. His brother, and Mr. Maurice his brother- 
in-law, — especially Mrs. Maurice the kind sister, faithfully 
endeavoring to be as a mother to her poor little nieces, — 
were occasionally with him. All hours available for labor 
on his literary tasks, he employed, almost exclusively I be- 
lieve, on C(Bur-de-Lion ; with what energy, the progress 
he had made in that Work, and in the art of Poetic compo- 
sition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best 
testifies. I perceive, his life, in general lay heavier on him 
than it had done before ; his mood of mind is grown more 
sombre ; — indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as a 
place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been new 
and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or 
ever ; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of 
wild gayety break through. He works steadily at his task, 
with all the strength left him ; endures the past as he may ; 
and makes gallant front against the world. ' I am going 
on quietly here, rather than happily,' writes he, to his 
friend Newman ; ' sometimes quite helpless, not from dis- 
tinct illness, but from sad tlioughts and a ghastly dreami- 
ness. The heart is gone out of my life. My children, 
. 28* 



330 JOHN STERLING. 

however, are doing well ; and the place is cheerful and 
mild.' 

From Letters of this period I might select some melan- 
choly enough; but -will prefer to give the following one 
(nearly the last I can give), as indicative of a less usual 
temper : 

* To Thomas Carlyle^Esq.y Qhehea^ London, 

' Yentnor, December 7th, 1843. 

' My dear Carlyle, — My Irish Newspaper was not 
meant as a hint that I wanted a Letter. It contained an 
absurb long Advertisement, — some project for regenerating 
human knowledge, &c. &c. ; to which I prefixed my private 
mark (a blot), thinking that you might be pleased to know 
of a fellow-laborer somewhere in Tipperary. 

' Your Letter, like the Scriptural oil, — (they had no 
patent lamps then, and used the best oil, 7s. per gallon), — 
has made my face to shine. There is but one person in 
the world, I shall not tell you who, from whom a Letter 
would give me so much pleasure. It would be nearly as 
good at Pekin, in the centre of the most enlightened Man- 
darins ; but here at Ventnor, where there are few Manda- 
rins and no enlightenment, — fountains in the wilderness, 
even were they miraculous, are nothing compared -with 
your handwriting. Yet it is sad that you should be so 
melancholy. I often think that though Mercury was the 
pleasanter fellow, and probably the happier, Saturn was 
the greater god: — rather cannibal or so, but one excuses it 
in him, as in some other heroes one knows of. 

' It is, as you say, your destiny to write about Cromwell : 



VENTNOR : DEATH. 331 

and you will make a book of him, at -wliich the ears of our 
grandchildren mil tingle ; and as one may hope that the 
ears of human nature will be growing longer and longer, 
the tingling will be proportionably greater than we are 
accustomed to. Do what you can, I fear there will be little 
gain from the Royalists. There is something very small 
about the biggest of them that I have ever fallen in with, 
unless you count old Hobbs a Royalist. 

' Curious to see that you have them exactly preserved in 
the Country Gentlemen of our day ; while of the Puritans 
not a trace remains except in History. Squirism had al- 
ready, in that day, became the caput mortuum that it is 
now ; and has therefore, like other mummies, been able to 
last. What was opposed to it was the Life of Puritanism, 
— then on the point of disappearing ; and it too has left its 
mummy at Exeter Hall on the platform and elsewhere. 
One must go back to the Middle Ages to see Squirism as 
rampant and vivacious as Biblicism Avas in the Seventeenth 
Century ; and I suppose our modern Country Gentlemen 
are about as near to what the old Knights and Barons were 
who fought the Crusades, as our modern Evangelicals to the 
fellows who sought the Lord by the light of their own 
pistol-shots. 

' Those same Crusades are now pleasant matter for me. 
You remember, or perhaps you do not, a thing I once sent 
you about Co3ur-de-Lion. Long since, I settled to make 
the Cantos you saw part of a larger Book ; and I worked 
at it, last autumn and winter, till I had a bad illness. I 
am now at work on it again ; and go full sail, like my hero. 
There are six Cantos done, roughly, besides what you saw. 
I have struck out most of the absurdest couplets, and given 



332 JOHN STERLING. 

the whole a higher though still sportive tone. It is becom- 
ing a kind of Odijssey, -ftith a laughing and Christian 
Achilles for hero. One may manage to wrap in that chiv- 
alrous brocade, many things belonging to our Time, and 
capable of interesting it. The thing is not bad ; but will 
require great labor. Only it is labor that I thoroughly 
like ; and which keeps the maggots out of one's brain, 
until their time. 

' I have never spoken to you, never been able to speak 
to you, of the change in ray life, — almost as great, one 
fancies, as one's own death. Even now, although it seems 
as if I had so much to say, I cannot. If one could imag- 
ine ' — * * * < gjjt it ig i;iQ use ; I cannot write wisely on 
this matter. I suppose no human being was ever devoted 
to another more entirely than she ; and that makes the 
change not less but more bearable. It seems as if she 
could not be gone quite ; and that indeed is my faith. 

' Mr. James, your New-England friend, was here only for 
a few days ; I saw him several times, and liked him. They 
went, on the 24th of last month, back to London, — or so 
purposed, — because there is no pavement here for him to 
walk on. I want to know where he is, and thought I should 
be able to learn from you. I gave him a Note for Mill, 
who perhaps may have seen him. I think this is all at 
present from, — Yours, 

*JoHN Sterling.' 

Of his health, all this while, we have heard little defi- 
nite ; and understood that he was very quiet and careful ; 
in virtue of which grand improvement we vaguely con- 
sidered all others would follow. Once let him learn well 



ventnor: death. 333 

to bo slow as the common ran of men are, would not all be 
safe and well ? Nor through the winter, or the cold spring 
months, did bad news reach us ; perhaps less news of any 
kind than had been usual, which seemed to indicate a still 
and wholesome way of life and work. Not till ' April 4th, 
1844,' did the new alarm occur: again on some slight ac- 
cident, the breaking of a blood-vessel ; again prostration 
under dangerous sickness, from which this time he never 
rose. 

There had been so many sudden fallings and happy ris- 
ings again in our poor Sterling's late course of health, we 
had grown so accustomed to mingle blame of his impetu- 
osity with pity for his sad overthrows, we did not for many 
weeks quite realize to ourselves the stern fact that here at 
length had the peculiar fall come upon us, — the last of all 
these falls ! This brittle life, which had so often held to- 
gether and victoriously rallied under pressures and collis- 
ions, could not rally always, and must one time be shiv- 
ered. It was not till the summer came and no improve- 
ment ; and not even then Avithout lingering glimmers of 
hope against hope, that I fairly had to own what had now 
come, what was now day by day sternly advancing with 
the steadiness of Time. 

From the first, the doctors spoke despondently ; and 
Sterling himself felt well that there was no longer any 
chance of life. He had often said so, in his former ill- 
nesses, and thought so, yet always till now with some tacit 
grain of counter-hope ; he had never clearly felt so as 
now : Here is the end ; the great change is now here ! — 
Seeing how it was, then, he earnestly gathered all his 
strength to do this last act of his tragedy, as he had striven 



334 ■ JOHN STERLING. 

to do the others, in a pious and manful manner. As I be- 
lieve we can say he did ; few men in any time more piously 
or manfully. For about six months he sat looking stead- 
fastly, at all moments, into the eyes of Death ; he too who 
had eyes to see Death and the Terrors and Eternities ; and 
surely it was with perfect courage and piety, and valiant 
simplicity of heart, that he bore himself, and did and 
thought and suffered, in this trying predicament, more ter- 
rible than the usual death of men. All strength left to 
him he still employed in working : day by day the end 
came nearer, but day by day also some new portion of his 
adjustments were completed, by some small stage his task 
was nearer done. His domestic and other affairs, of all 
sorts, he settled to the last item. Of his own Papers, he 
saved a few, giving brief pertinent directions about them ; 
great quantities, among which a certain Autobiography 
begun some years ago at Clifton, he ruthlessly burnt, judg- 
ing that the best. To his friends he left messages, memo- 
rials of books : I have Gough's Camden, and other relics, 
which came to me in that way, and are among my sacred 
possessions. The very Letters of his friends he sorted and 
returned ; had each friend's Letters made into a packet, 
sealed with black, and duly addressed for delivery when 
the time should come. 

At an early period of his illness, all visitors had of course 
been excluded except his most intimate ones : before long, 
so soon as the end became apparent, he took leave even of 
his Father, to avoid excitements and intolerable emotions ; 
and except his Brother and the Maurices, who were gen- 
erally about him coming and going, none were admitted. 
This latter form of life, I think, continued for above three 



ventnor: death. 335 

months. Men were still working about his grounds, of 
whom he took some charge ; needful works, great and 
small, let them not pause on account of him. He still rose 
from bed : had still some portion of his day which he 
could spend in his Library. Besides business there, he 
read a good deal, — earnest books ; the Bible, most earnest 
of books, his chief favorite. He still 'even Avrote a good 
deal. To his eldest Boj, now Mr. Newman's ward, who 
had been removed to the Maurices' since the beginning of 
this illness, he addressed every day or two, sometimes daily, 
for eight or nine weeks, a Letter, of general paternal ad- 
vice and exhortation ; interspersing, sparingly, now and 
then, such notices of his own feelings and condition as 
could be addressed to a boy. These Letters I have lately 
read : they give beyond any he has written, a noble image 
of the intrinsic Sterling, — the same face we had long 
known ; but painted now as on the azure of Eternity, se- 
rene, victorious, divinely sad ; the dusts and extraneous 
disfigurements imprinted on it by the world, now washed 
away. One little Excerpt, not the best, but the fittest for 
its neighborhood here, will be welcome to the reader: 

' To Master Edward Q. Sterling, London. 

' Hillside, Veutnor, June 29th, 1844. 

' My Dear Boy, — We have been going on here as 
quietly as possible, with no event that I know of. There 
is nothing except books to occupy me. But you may sup- 
pose that my thoughts often move towards you, and that I 
fancy what you may be doing in the great city, — the great- 
est on the Earth, — where I spent so many years of my life. 



336 JOHN STERLING. 

I first saw London Avhen I was between eight and nine years 
old, and then lived in or near it for the whole of the next 
ten, and more than any where else for seven years longer. 
Since then I have hardly ever been a year without seeing 
the place, and have often lived in it for a considerable time. 
There I grew from childhood to be a man. My little 
Brothers and Sisters, and since, my Mother, died and are 
buried there. There I first saw your Mamma, and was 
there married. It seems as if, in some strange way, Lon- 
don were a part of Me or I of London. I think of it 
often, not as a voice full of noise and dust and confusion, 
but as something silent, grand and everlasting. 

' When I fancy how you are walking in the same streets, 
and moving along the same river, that I used to watch so 
intently, as if in a dream, when younger than you are, — I 
could gladly burst into tears, not of grief, but with a feeling 
that there is no name for. Every thing is so wonderful, 
great and holy, so sad and yet not bitter, so full of Death 
and so bordering on Heaven. Can you understand any 
thing of this ? If you can, you will begin to know what a 
serious matter our Life is ; how miAvorthy and stupid it is 
to trifle it away without heed ; what a wretched, insignifi- 
cant, worthless creature any one comes to be, who does not 
as soon as possible, bend his whole strength, as in stringing 
a stiff bow, to doing whatever task lies first before him.' * * 

' We have a mist here to-day from the sea. It reminds 
me of that which I used to see from my house in St. Vin- 
cent, rolling over the great volcano and the mountains 
round it. I used to look at it from our windows with your 
Mamma, and you a little baby in her arms. 



ventnor: death. 337 

' This Letter is not so "well -written as I could wish, but I 
hope jou -will be able to read it. — Your affectionate Papa, 

' John Sterling.' 

These Letters go from June 9th to August 2d, at which 
latter date, vacation-time arrived, and the Boy returned to 
him. The Letters are preserved ; and surely well worth 
preserving. 

In this manner he wore the slow doomed months away. 
Day after day his little period of Library went on waning, 
shrinking into less and less ; but I think it never altogether 
ended till the general end came. For courage, for active 
audacity we had all known Sterling ; but such a fund of 
mild stoicism, of devout patience and heroic composure, we 
did not hitherto know in him. His sufferings, his sorrows, 
all his unutterabilitles in this slow agony, he held right 
manfully down ; marched loyally, as at the bidding of the 
Eternal, into the dread Kingdoms, and no voice of weak- 
ness was heard from him. Poor noble Sterling, he had 
struggled so high and gained so little here ! But this also 
he did gain, to be a brave man, and it was much. 

Summer passed into Autumn : Sterling's earthly busi- 
nesses, to the last detail of them, were now all as good as 
done ; his strength too was wearing to its end, his daily 
turn in the Library shrunk now to a span. He had to hold 
himself as if in readiness for the great voyage at any mo- 
ment. One other Letter I must give ; not quite the last 
message I had from Sterling, but the last that can be in- 
serted here ; a brief Letter, fit to be forever memorable to 
the receiver of it : 
29 



338 JOHN STERLING. 

* To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' HUlside, Ventnor, August 10th, 1844. 

'My dear Carlyle, — For the first time for many 
months it seems possible to send you a few words ; merely, 
however, for Remembrance and Farewell. On higher mat- 
ters there is nothing to say. I tread the common road into 
the great darkness, without any thought of fear, and with 
very much of hope. Certainty indeed I have none. With 
regard to You and Me I cannot begin to write ; having 
nothing for it but to keep shut the lid of those secrets with 
all the iron Aveights that are in my power. Towards me it 
13 still more true than towards England that no man has 
been and done like you. Heaven bless you ! If I can 
lend a hand when there, that will not be wanting. It is 
all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as it 
seems to the standers-by. 

' Your Wife knows my mind towards her, and will believe 
it without asseverations. 

' Yours to the last, 

' John Sterling.' 

It was a bright Sunday morning when this Letter came 
to me : if in the great Cathedral of Immensity I did no 
worship that day, the fault surely was my own. Sterling 
affectionately refused to see me ; which also was kind and 
wise. And four days before his death, there are some 
stanzas of verse for me, written as if in star-fire and immor- 
tal tears ; which are among my sacred possessions, to be 
kept for myself alone. 

His business with the world was done ; the one business 



ventnor: death. 339 

now to await silently what may lie in other grander worlds. 
" God is great," he was wont to say : " God is great." 
The Maurices were now constantly near him ; Mrs. Mau- 
rice assiduously watching over him. On the evening of 
Wednesday the 18th of September, his Brother, as he did 
every two or three days, came down ; found him in the 
old temper, weak in strength but not very sensibly weaker ; 
they talked calmly together for an hour ; then Anthony left 
his bedside, and retired for the night, not expecting any 
change. But suddenly about eleven o'clock, there came a 
summons and alarm : hurrjing to his Brother's room, he 
found his Brother dying ; and in a short while more the 
faint last struggle v/as ended, and all those struggles and 
strenuous often-foiled endeavors of ^eightand-thirty years iay 
hushed in death. -^ 



340 JOHN STERLING, 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CONCLUSION. 

Sterling was of rattier slim but well-boned wiry figure, 
perhaps an inch or two from six feet in height ; of blonde 
complexion, without color, yet not pale or sickly ; dark- 
blonde hair, copious enough, which he usually wore short. 
The general aspect of him indicated freedom, perfect spon- 
taneity, with a certain careless natural grace. In his ap- 
parel, you could notice, he affected dim colors, easy shapes ; 
cleanly always, yet even in this not fastidious or conspicu- 
ous ; he sat or stood, oftenest, in loose sloping postures ; 
walked with long strides, body carelessly bent, head flung 
eagerly forward, right hand perhaps grasping a cane, and 
rather by the middle to swing it, than by the end to use it 
otherwise. An attitude of frank, cheerful impetuosity, of 
hopeful speed and alacrity ; which indeed his physiognomy, 
on all sides of it, offered as the chief expression. Alacrity, 
velocity, joyous ardor, dwelt in the eyes too, which were of 
brownish gray, full of bright kindly life, rapid and frank 
rather than deep or strong. A smile, half of kindly impa- 
tience, half of real mirth, often sat on his face. The head 
was long ; high over the vertex ; in the brow, of fair 
breadth, but not high for such a man. 

In the voice, which was of good tenor sort, rapid and 
strikingly distinct, powerful too, and except in some of the 



CONCLUSION. 341 

higher notes harmonious, there was a clear-ringing metallic 
tone, — which I often thought was wonderfully physiog- 
nomic. A certain splendor, beautiful, but not the deepest 
or the softest, which I could call a splendor as of burnished 
metal, — fiery valor of heart, swift decisive insight and 
utterance, then a turn for briUiant elegance, also for osten- 
tation, rashness, &c. &c., — in short a flash as of clear- 
glancing sharp-cutting steel, lay in the whole nature of the 
man, in his heart and in his intellect, marking ahke the 
excellence and the limits of them both. His laugh, which 
on light occasions was ready and frequent, had in it no 
great depth of gayety, or sense for the ludicrous in men or 
things ; you might call it rather a good smile become vocal 
than a deep real laugh : with his whole man I never saw 
him laugh. A clear sense of the humorous he had, as of 
most other things ; but in himself little or no true humor ; 
nor did he attempt that side of things. To call him de- 
ficient in sympathy would seem strange, him- whose radi- 
ances and resonances went thrilling over all the world, and 
kept him in brotherly contact with all : but I may say his 
sympathies dwelt rather with the high and sublime than 
with the low or ludicrous ; and were, in any field, rather 
light, wide and lively, than deep, abiding or great. 

There is no Portrait of him which tolerably resembles. 
The miniature Medallion, of which Mr. Hare has given an 
Engraving, offers us, with no great truth in physical details, 
one, and not the best, superficial expression of his face, as 
if that with vacuity had been what the face contained ; and 
even that Mr. Hare's engraver has disfigured into the 
nearly or the utterly irrecognizable. Two Pencil-sketches, 
which no artist could approve of, hasty sketches done in 
29* 



342 JOHN STERLING. 

some social hour, one by his friend Spedding, one by Bay- 
nim the Novelist, whom he slightly knew and had been 
kind to, tell a much truer story so far as they go : of these 
his Brother has engravings ; but these also I must suppress 
as inadequate for strangers. 

Nor in the way of Spiritual Portraiture does there, after 
so much writing and excerpting, any thing of importance 
remain for me to say. John Sterling and his Life in this 
world were — such as has been already said. In purity of 
character, in the so-called moralities, in all manner of pro- 
prieties of conduct, so as tea-tables and other human tribu- 
nals rule them, he might be defined as perfect, according 
to the world's pattern : in these outward tangible respects, 
the world's criticism of him must have been praise and that 
only. An honorable man and good citizen; discharging, 
with unblamable correctness, all functions and duties laid 
on him by the customs Qmores) of the society he lived in, 
with correctness and something more. In all these partic- 
ulars, a man perfectly moral, or of approved virtue accord- 
ing to the rules. 

Nay in the far more essential tacit virtues, which are not 
marked on stone tables, are so apt to be insisted on by hu- 
man creatures over tea or elsewhere, — in clear and perfect 
fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike and soldier- 
like, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, and what of 
good and evil that miglit send him, — he excelled among 
good men. The joys and the sorrows of his lot he took 
with true simplicity and acquiescence. Like a true son, 
not like a miserable mutinous rebel, he comported himself 
in this Universe. Extremity of distress, — and surely his 



. CONCLUSION. 343 

fervid temper had enough of contradiction in this world, — 
could not tempt him into impatience at any time. By no 
chance did you ever hear from him a whisper of those mean 
repinings, miserable arraignings and questionings of the 
Eternal Power, such as weak souls even well disposed will 
sometimes give Avay to in the pressure of their despair ; to 
the like of this he never yielded, or shewed the least ten- 
dency to yield ; — which surely was well enough on his 
part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, will not an-^ 
swer the like of this, but silently and terribly accounts it 
impious, blasphemous and damnable, and now as heretofore 
will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a son, I said ; willing 
to suiFer when Heaven said, Thou shalt ; — and withal, what 
is perhaps rarer in such a combination, willing to rejoice 
also, and right cheerily taking the good that was sent, 
whensoever or in whatever form it came. 

A pious soul we may justly call him ; devoutly submis- 
sive to the will of the Supreme in all things : the highest 
and sole essential form which Religion can assume in man, 
and without which all forms of religion are a mockery and 
a delusion in man. Doubtless, in so clear and filial a heart 
there must have dwelt the perennial feeling of silent wor- 
ship ; which silent feeling, as we have seen, he was eager 
enough to express by all good ways of utterance ; zealously 
adopting such appointed forms and creeds as the Dignita- 
ries of the World had fixed upon and solemnly named re- 
commendable ; prostrating his heart in such Church, by 
such accredited rituals and seemingly fit or half-fit methods, 
as his poor time and country had to offer him, — not rejecting 
the said methods till they stood convicted of palpable un- 
fitness, and then doing it right gently withal, rather letting 



344 JOHN STERLING. 

them drop as pitiably dead for him, than angrily hurling 
them out of doors as needing to be killed. By few Eng- 
lishmen of his epoch had the thing called Church of 
England been more loyally appealed to as a spiritual 
mother. 

And yet, as I said before, it may be questioned whether 
piety, what we call devotion or worship, was the principle 
deepest inhim. In spite of his Coleridge discipleship, and 
his once headlong operations following thereon, I used to 
judge that his piety was prompt and pure rather than great 
or intense ; that on the whole, religious devotion was not 
the deepest element of him. His reverence was ardent and 
just, ever ready for the thing or man that deserved rever- 
ing, or seemed to deserve it : but he was of too joyful, 
light and hoping a nature to go to the depths of that feel- 
ing, much more to dwell perennially in it. He had no 
fear in his composition ; terror and awe did not blend with 
his respect of any thing. In no scene or epoch could he 
have been a Church Saint, a fanatic enthusiast, or have 
\7orn out his life in passive martyrdom, sitting patient in 
his grim coal-mine looking at the ' three ells ' of Heaven 
high overhead. In sorrow he would not dwell ; all sorrow 
he swiftly subdued, and shook away from him. How could 
you have made an Indian Fakeer of the Greek Apollo, 
' whose bright eye lends brightness, and never yet saw a 
shadow V — I should say, not religious reverence, rather 
artistic admiration was the essential character of him : a 
fact connected with all other facts in the physiognomy of 
his life and self, and giving a tragic enough character to 
much of the history he had among us. 

Poor Sterling, he was by nature appointed for a Poet, 



CONCLUSION. 345 

then, — a Poet after his sort, or recognizer and delineator 
of the Beautiful ; and not for a Priest at all ? Striving 
towards the sunny heights, out of such a level and through 
such an element as ours in these days is, he had strange 
aberrations appointed him, and painful wanderings amid 
the miserable gas-lights, bog-fires, dancing meteors and 
putrid phosphorescences which form the guidance of a 
young human soul at present! Nor till after trying all 
manner of sublimely illuminated places, and finding that 
the basis of them was putridity, artificial gas and quaking 
bog, did he, when his strength was all done, discover his 
true sacred hill, and passionately climb thither while life 
was fast ebbing ! — A tragic history, as all histories are ; yet 
a gallant, brave and noble one, as not many are. It is 
what, to a radiant son of the Muses, and bright messenger 
of the harmonious Wisdoms, this poor world, — if he himself 
have not strength enough, and inertia enough, — and amid 
his harmonious eloquences silence enough, — has provided 
at present. Many a high striving, too-hasty soul, seeking 
guidance towards eternal excellence from the official Black- 
artists, and successful Professors of political, ecclesiastical, 
philosophical, commercial, general and particular Legerde- 
main, will recognize his own history in this image of a fellow 
pilgrim's. 

Over-haste was Sterling's continual fault ; over-haste, 
and want of the due strength, — alas, mere want of the due 
inertia chiefly ; which is so common a gift for most part ; 
and proves so inexorably needful withal ! But he was 
good and generous and true ; joyful where there was joy, 
patient and silent where endurance was required of him ; 
shook innumerable sorrows, and thick-crowding forms of pain, 



346 JOHN STERLING. 

gallantly away from him ; fared frankly forward, and with 
scrupulous care to tread on no one's toes. True, above 
all, one may call him ; a man of perfect veracity in thought, 
word and deed. Integrity towards all men — nay integrity 
had ripened with him into chivalrous generosity ; there was 
no guile or baseness any where found in him. Transparent 
as crystal ; he could not hide any thing sinister, if such 
there had been to hide. A more perfectly transparent 
soul I have never known. It was beautiful, to read all 
those interior movements ; the little shades of affectations, 
ostentations ; transient spurts of anger, Avhich never grew 
to the length of settled spleen ; all so naive, so childlike, 
the very faults grew beautiful to you. 

And so he played his part among us, and has now ended 
it : in this first half of the Nineteenth Century, such was 
the shape of human destinies the world and he made out 
between them. He sleeps now, in the little burying-ground 
of Bonchurch ; bright, ever young in the memory of others 
that must grow old; and was honorably released from his 
toils before the hottest of the day. 

All that remains, in palpable shape, of John Sterling's 
activities in this world are those Two poor Volumes ; scat- 
tered fragments gathered from the general waste of for- 
gotten ephemera by the piety of a friend : an inconsidera- 
ble memorial ; not pretending to have achieved greatness ; 
only disclosing, mournfully, to the more observant, that a 
promise of greatness was there. Like other such lives, like 
all lives, this is a tragedy : high hopes, noble efforts ; under 
thickening difficulties and impediments, ever-new nobleness 
of valiant effort ; — and the result death, with conquests by 



CONCLUSION. 347 

no means corresponding. A life -wbich cannot challenge 
the world's attention ; yet -wbich does modestly solicit it, 
and perhaps on clear study will be found to reward it. 

On good evidence let tbe world understand tbat here 
was a remarkable soul born into it ; who, more than others, 
sensible to its influences, took intensely into him such tint 
and shape of feature as the world bad to offer there and 
then ; fashioning himself eagerly by whatsoever of noble 
presented itself; participating ardently in the world's 
battle, and suffering deeply in its bewilderments; — whose 
Life-pilgrimage accordingly is an emblem, unusually signifi- 
cant, of the world's own during those years of his. A man 
of infinite susceptivity ; who caught everywhere, more 
than others, the color of the element he lived in, the infec- 
tion of all that was or appeared honorable, beautiful and 
manful in the tendencies of his Time ; — whose history there- 
fore is, beyond others, emblematical of that of his Time. 

In Sterling's Writings and Actions, were they capable of 
being well read, we consider that there is for all true 
hearts, and especially for young noble seekers, and strivers 
towards what is highest, a mirror in which some shadow of 
themselves and of their immeasurably complex arena will 
profitably present itself. Here also is one encompassed 
and struggling even as they now are. This man also had 
said to himself, not in mere Catechism words, but with all 
his instincts, and the question thrilled in every nerve of 
him, and pulsed in every drop of his blood : " What is the 
chief end of man ? Behold, I too would live and work as 
beseems a denizen of this Universe, a child of the Highest 
God. By what means is a noble life still possible for me 
here ? Ye Heavens and thou Earth, oh, how ?" — The 



-f ^ / ^ 

348 JOHN STERLING. ' '-^ 

I, « 

history of this long-continued prayer and endeavor, lasting 
in various figures for near forty years, may now and for 
some time coming have something to say to men ! 

Nay, what of men or of the world ? Here, visible to 
myself, for some while, was a brilliant human presence, 
distinguishable, honorable and lovable amid the dim com- 
mon populations ; among the million little beautiful, once 
more a beautiful human soul ; whom I, among others, re- 
cognized and lovingly walked with, while the years and 
the hours were. Sitting now by his tomb in thoughtful 
mood, the new times bring a new duty for me. " Why 
write the Life of Sterling ?" I imagine I had a commission 
higher than the world's, the dictate of Nature herself, to 
do what is now done. S)ic jjrosit. 



THE END. 



